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THE LIFE 

OF 

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 




^/farm/A*/ ^Avfawbefy/i/A/ wicwle' /vriy >^JjsO<Ptd9is, ^/SSt 



THE LIFE 

OF 

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 



BY 

GRAHAM BALFOUR 



ABRIDGED EDITION 
REVISED AND ILLUSTRATED 



NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

MCMXV 






COPYRIGHT, I9II, I9IS, BY 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 




SEP 30 1915 



00 

©CI.A410696 

A*/ 



PREFACE 

'T S HE duty of writing this book was finally entrusted 
to me because during the last two and a half years 
before my cousin's death I had on his invitation made 
Vailima my home and the point of departure for my 
journeys, and, apart from the members of his own fam- 
ily, I had been throughout that period the only one of 
his intimate friends in touch with every side of his life. 

In order to present the book in a single volume it 
has been necessary to reduce it in bulk, but this oppor- 
tunity has been used solely for the purpose of lighten- 
ing it and rendering it generally more readable. Part 
of the matter omitted, such as the Vailima Prayers, has 
now been published elsewhere: the chief part of the re- 
mainder related either to Samoan politics or contained 
details concerning some of Stevenson's minor works, 
which were of interest only to the special student who 
can still find what he needs in the unabridged edition. 
Some quotations have been abridged and a few trivial 
paragraphs omitted. The framework has been slightly 
cut down: the general effect of the picture has, so far 
as I could manage, remained unaltered. 

Occasion has been taken to give this edition a form 
which it was hoped might prove to be final. But the 
days which Stevenson foresaw in the Inland Voyage have 
come upon the Oise and the Aisne, and the results of the 
war have affected even remote Samoa. (See pages 124, 
291.) And who can say what further changes the future 
may hold ? 

March, 1915. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I.— His Ancestors i 

II. — His Parents 17 

III. — Ineancy and Childhood — 1850-59 .... 27 

IV. — Boyhood — 1859-67 45 

V. — Student Days — 1867-73 0I 

VI. — Life at Five-and-Twenty — 1873-76 ... 93 

VII.— Transition— 1876-79 125 

Vin. — California — 1879-80 144 

IX. — Davos and the Highlands — 1880-82 . . . 158 

X.— The Rtvtera— 1882-84 175 

XI. — Bournemouth — 1884-87 187 

XII.— The United States— 1887-88 208 

Xm.— The Eastern Pacific— 1888-89 224 

XIV.— The Central Pacific— 1888-91 252 

XV. — Vait.tma — 1891-94 284 

XVI— The End— 1894 324 

XVTL— R. L. S 340 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Robert Louis Stevenson, from a photograph made in 

Boston, 1887 Frontispiece ^ 

FACING PAGE 

8 Howard Place, Edinburgh, Birthplace of Stevenson 26 

The Manse at Colinton 50 

Robert Louis Stevenson, aet. 20 74 ^ 

The Bridge at Crez 114. 

The Square at Monterey, showing Simoneau's House 148 ^ 

Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson (about 1886) .... 156 

Skerry vore, Stevenson's Cottage at Bournemouth . 186 

Stevenson on the Yacht " Casco " 222^ 

Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 240 v 

The House at Vailima 284 v 

Stevenson at Vailima 302 

The Memorial Bas-relief of Stevenson, by Augustus 
St. Gaudens, in the Cathedral Church of St. 

Giles, Edinburgh 338 



THE LIFE OF 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

CHAPTER I 

HIS ANCESTORS 

"The ascendant hand is what I feel most strongly; I am 
bound in and in with my forbears. . . . We are all nobly born; 
fortunate those who know it; blessed those who remember." — 
R. L. S., Letters, iii. 316. 

"The sights and thoughts of my youth pursue me; and I see 
like a vision the youth of my father, and of his father, and the 
whole stream of lives flowing down there far in the north, with 
the sound of laughter and tears, to cast me out in the end, as by 
a sudden freshet, on these ultimate islands. And I admire and 
bow my head before the romance of destiny." — R. L. S., Dedica- 
tion oj Catriona. 

"TT is the chief recommendation of long pedigrees," 
as Stevenson once wrote, "that we can follow 
■*■ back the careers of our component parts and be 
reminded of our ante-natal lives." But the threads 
are many and tangled, and it is hard to distinguish 
for more than a generation or two the transmission 
of the characteristics that are combined in any indi- 
vidual of our own day. When a man has been dead 
for a hundred years, it is seldom that anything is 
remembered of him but his name and his occupation; 



2 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

he has become no more than a link in a pedigree, and 
the personal disposition is forgotten which made him 
loved or feared, together with the powers that gained 
him success, or the weaknesses that brought about 
his failure. Therefore it is no unusual circumstance 
that, while we can trace the line of Stevenson's an- 
cestors on either side for two and four hundred years 
respectively, our knowledge of them, in any real 
sense of the word, begins only at the end of the eigh- 
teenth century. After that date we have four por- 
traits, drawn in part by his own hand, together with 
the materials for another sketch; in these may be 
discerned some of the traits and faculties which went 
to make up a personality so unusual, so fascinating, 
and so deeply loved. 

The record of his father's people opens in 1675 
with the birth of a son, Robert, to James Stevenson, 
"presumably a tenant farmer" of Nether Carsewell 
in the parish of Neilston, some ten miles to the south- 
west of Glasgow. Robert's son, a maltster in Glas- 
gow, had ten children, among whom were Hugh, born 
1749, and Alan, born June, 1752. 

"With these two brothers my story begins," their 
descendant wrote in A Family of Engineers. "Their 
deaths were simultaneous; their lives unusually brief 
and full. Tradition whispered me in childhood they 
were the owners of an islet near St. Kitts; and it is 
certain they had risen to be at the head of consider- 
able interests in the West Indies, which Hugh man- 
aged abroad and Alan at home," almost before they 
had reached the years of manhood. In 1774 Alan 



HIS ANCESTORS 3 

was summoned to the West Indies by Hugh. "An 
agent had proved unfaithful on a serious scale; and 
it used to be told me in my childhood how the broth- 
ers pursued him from one island to another in an 
open boat, were exposed to the pernicious dews of the 
tropics, and simultaneously struck down. The dates 
and places of their deaths would seem to indicate 
a more scattered and prolonged pursuit." At all 
events, "in something like the course of post, both 
were called away, the one twenty-five, the other 
twenty- two." 

Alan left behind him a wife and one child, Robert, 
aged two, the future engineer of the Bell Rock, who 
was destined to be the grandfather of Robert Louis 
Stevenson. The widow was daughter of David 
Lillie, a Glasgow builder, several times Deacon of 
the Wrights, but had lost her father only a month be- 
fore her husband's death, and for the time, at any 
rate, mother and son were almost destitute. She 
was, however, "a young woman of strong sense, well 
fitted to contend with poverty, and of a pious dispo- 
sition, which it is like that these misfortunes heated. 
Like so many other widowed Scotswomen, she 
vowed her son should wag his head in a pulpit; but 
her means were inadequate to her ambition." He 
made no great figure at the schools in Edinburgh to 
which she could afford to send him; but before he 
was fifteen there occurred an event "which changed 
his own destiny and moulded that of his descendants 
— the second marriage of his mother." 

The new husband was "a merchant burgess of 
Edinburgh of the name of Thomas Smith," a wid- 



4 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

ower of thirty-three with children, who is described 
as "a man ardent, passionate, practical, designed for 
affairs, and prospering in them far beyond the aver- 
age." He was, among other things, a shipowner and 
underwriter; but chiefly he "founded a solid busi- 
ness in lamps and oils, and was the sole proprietor 
of a concern called the Greenside Company's Works 
— 'a multifarious concern of tinsmiths, coppersmiths, 
brassfounders, blacksmiths, and japanners.' " Con- 
sequently, in August 1786, less than a year before 
his second marriage, "having designed a system of 
oil lights to take the place of the primitive coal fires 
before in use, he was dubbed engineer to the newly- 
formed Board of Northern Lighthouses." 

The profession was a new one, just beginning to 
grow in the hands of its first practitioners; in it Rob- 
ert Stevenson found his vocation and so entered with 
great zest into the pursuits of his stepfather. " The 
public usefulness of the service would appeal to his 
judgment, the perpetual need for fresh expedients 
stimulate his ingenuity. And there was another at- 
traction which, in the young man at least, appealed 
to, and perhaps first aroused a profound and endu- 
ring sentiment of romance; I mean the attraction of 
the life. The seas into which his labours carried 
the new engineer were still scarce charted, the coasts 
still dark; his way on shore was often far beyond the 
convenience of any road, the isles in which he must 
sojourn were still partly savage. He must toss much 
in boats; he must often adventure on horseback by 
the dubious bridle- track through unfrequented wilder- 
nesses; he must sometimes plant his lighthouse in 



HIS ANCESTORS 5 

the very camp of wreckers; and he. was continually 
enforced to the vicissitudes of outdoor life. The 
joy of my grandfather in this career was strong as 
the love of woman. It lasted him through youth 
and manhood, it burned strong in age, and at the ap- 
proach of death his last yearning was to renew these 
loved experiences. At the age of nineteen I find him 
already in a post of some authority, superintending 
the construction of the lighthouse on the isle of Little 
Cumbrae in the Firth of Clyde. The change of aim 
seems to have caused or been accompanied by a 
change of character. It sounds absurd to couple the 
name of my grandfather with the word indolence; 
but the lad who had been destined from the cradle to 
the Church, and who had attained the age of fifteen 
without acquiring more than a moderate knowledge 
of Latin, was at least no unusual student. From 
the day of his charge at Little Cumbrae he steps be- 
fore us what he remained until the end — a man of 
the most zealous industry, greedy of occupation, 
greedy of knowledge, a stern husband of time, a 
reader, a writer, unflagging in his task of self-im- 
provement. Thenceforward his summers were spent 
directing works and ruling workmen, now in unin- 
habited, now in half-savage islands; his winters 
were set apart, first at the Andersonian Institution, 
then at the University of Edinburgh, to improve him- 
self in mathematics, chemistry, natural history, agri- 
culture, moral philosophy, and logic." 

His mother's marriage made a great change also 
in his domestic life: an only child hitherto, he had 
become a member of a large family, for his step- 



6 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

father had already five children. However, "the 
perilous experiment of bringing together two families 
for once succeeded. Mr. Smith's two eldest daugh- 
ters, Jean and Janet, fervent in piety, unwearied in 
kind deeds, were well qualified both to appreciate and 
to attract the stepmother," just as her son found im- 
mediate favour in the eyes of her husband. Either 
family, it seems, had been composed of two elements; 
and in the united household "not only were the 
women extremely pious but the men were in reality 
a trifle worldly. Religious the latter both were; con- 
scious, like all Scotts, of the fragility and unreality of 
that scene in which we play our uncomprehended 
parts; like all Scots, realising daily and hourly the 
sense of another will than ours, and a perpetual 
direction in the affairs of life. But the current of 
their endeavours flowed in a more obvious channel. 
They had got on so far, to get on further was their 
next ambition — to gather wealth, to rise in society, 
to leave their descendants higher than themselves, to 
be (in some sense) among the founders of families. 
Scott was in the same town nourishing similiar 
dreams. But in the eyes of the women these dreams 
would be foolish and idolatrous." 

The connection thus established was destined yet 
further to affect the life of the young man, and this 
contrast in the household was still to be perpetuated. 
"By an extraordinary arrangement, in which it is 
hard not to suspect the managing hand of a mother, 
Jean Smith became the wife of Robert Stevenson. 
The marriage of a man of twenty-seven and a girl of 
twenty, who have lived for twelve years as brother and 



HIS ANCESTORS 7 

sister, is difficult to conceive. It took place, however, 
and thus in 1799 the family was still further cemented 
by the union of a representative of the male or worldly 
element with that of the female and devout. 

"This essential difference remained unabridged, 
yet never diminished the strength of their relation. 
My grandfather pursued his design of advancing in 
the world with some measure of success; rose to dis- 
tinction in his calling, grew to be the familiar of 
members of Parliament, judges of the Court of Ses- 
sion, and ' landed gentlemen'; learned a ready ad- 
dress, had a flow of interesting conversation, and 
when he was referred to as 'a highly respectable 
bourgeois? resented the description. My grand- 
mother remained to the end devout and unambitious, 
occupied with her Bible, her children, and her house; 
easily shocked, and associating largely with a clique 
of godly parasites. . . . 

"The cook was a godly woman, the butcher a 
Christian man, and the table suffered. The scene 
has been described to me of my grandfather saw- 
ing with darkened countenance at some indissoluble 
joint — ' Preserve me, my dear, what kind of a reedy, 
stringy beast is this ?' — of the joint removed, the pud- 
ding substituted and uncovered; and of my grand- 
mother's anxious glance and hasty, deprecatory com- 
ment, ' Just mismanaged!' Yet with the invincible 
obstinacy of soft natures, she would adhere to the 
godly woman and the Christian man, or find others 
of the same kidney to replace them." 

Readers of Weir of Hermiston will recognise in 
this picture the original of Mrs. Weir in all her piety, 



8 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

gentleness, and incompetence, yet in real life, 'hus- 
band and sons all entertained for this pious, tender 
soul the same chivalrous and moved affection. , 

It is no part of my purpose to follow the profes- 
sional life of Robert Stevenson, which was, moreover, 
written by his son David. In 1807 he was appointed 
sole engineer to the Board of Northern Lights, and 
in the same year began his great work at the Bell 
Rock, the first lighthouse ever erected far from land 
upon a reef deeply submerged at every tide. He built 
twenty lighthouses in all, and introduced many inven- 
tions and improvements in the system of lighting. 
He did not resign his post until his powers began 
to fail in 1843, an d he died in 1850, four months before 
the birth of the most famous of his grandsons. 

" He began to ail early in that year, and chafed for 
the period of the annual voyage, which was his medi- 
cine and delight. In vain his sons dissuaded him 
from the adventure. The day approached, the ob- 
stinate old gentleman was found in his room, fur- 
tively packing a portmanteau, and the truth had 
to be told him ere he would desist — that he was 
stricken with a malignant malady, and that before 
the yacht should have completed her circuit of the 
lights, must himself have started on a more distant 
cruise. My father has more than once told me of 
the scene with emotion. The old man was intrepid; 
he had faced death before with a firm countenance; 
and I do not suppose he was much dashed at the 
nearness of our common destiny. But there was 
something else that would cut him to the quick — the 
loss of the cruise, the end of all his cruising; the 



HIS ANCESTORS 9 

knowledge that he had looked his last on Sumburgh, 
and the wild crags of Skye, and that Sound of Mull, 
with the praise of which his letters were so often oc- 
cupied; that he was never again to hear the surf break 
in Clashcarnock; never again to see lighthouse after 
lighthouse (all younger than himself, and the more 
part of his own device) open in the hour of dusk their 
flowers of fire, or the topaz and the ruby interchange 
on the summit of the Bell Rock. To a life of so 
much activity and danger, a life's work of so much 
interest and essential beauty, here came a long fare- 
well." 

"My grandfather was much of a martinet, and 
had a habit of expressing himself on paper with an 
almost startling emphasis. Personally, with his pow- 
erful voice, sanguine countenance, and eccentric and 
original locutions, he was well qualified to inspire 
a salutary terror in the service. ... In that service 
he was king to his finger-tips. All should go in his 
way, from the principal lightkeeper's coat to the 
assistant's fender, from the gravel in the garden- 
walks to the bad smell in the kitchen, or the oil-spots 
on the storeroom floor. It might be thought there 
was nothing more calculated to awake men's resent- 
ment, and yet his rule was not more thorough than it 
was beneficent. His thought for the keepers was 
continual, and it did not end with their lives. . . . 
While they lived, he wrote behind their backs to ar- 
range for the education of their children, or to get 
them other situations if they seemed unsuitable for 
the Northern Lights. When he was at a lighthouse 
on a Sunday he held prayers and heard the children 



io LIFE OF STEVENSON 

read. When a keeper was sick, he lent him his horse 
and sent him mutton and brandy from the ship. 
'The assistant's wife having been this morning con- 
fined, there was sent ashore a bottle of sherry and a 
few rusks — a practice which I have always observed 
in this service.' . . . No servant of the Northern 
Lights came to Edinburgh but he was entertained at 
Baxter's Place to breakfast. There at his own table 
my grandfather sat down delightedly with his broad- 
spoken, home-spun officers. His whole relation to 
the service was, in fact, patriarchal; and I believe I 
may say that throughout its ranks he was adored. 
I have spoken with many who knew him; I was his 
grandson, and their words may very well have been 
words of flattery; but there was one thing that could 
not be affected, and that was the look and light that 
came into their faces at the name of Robert Steven- 
son." 

Sir Walter Scott accompanied the Commissioners 
and their officer on one of the annual voyages of the 
Pharos round the coasts of Scotland, and his Journal 
shows that he found Robert Stevenson an apprecia- 
tive and intelligent companion. 

While the great engineer was the man of action that 
his grandson longed to be, he also essayed author- 
ship to some purpose. He wrote and published an 
Account of the Bell Rock Lighthouse, which, as his 
grandson says, "is of its sort a masterpiece, and has 
been so recognised by judges; 'the romance of stone 
and lime,' it has been called, and 'the Robinson 
Crusoe of engineering,' both happy and descriptive 
phrases. Even in his letters, though he cannot always 



HIS ANCESTORS n 

be trusted for the construction of his sentences, the 
same literary virtues are apparent — a strong sense of 
romance and reality, and an almost infallible in- 
stinct for the right detail." 

Traits are obliterated and the characteristics of a 
family may change, but the old man's detestation of 
everything slovenly or dishonest, "his interest in the 
whole page of experience, and his perpetual quest 
and fine scent for all that seems romantic to a boy," 
were handed down, if ever taste was transmitted, 
to his grandson. Of the one as of the other it might 
well have been said that "Perfection was his de- 
sign." But when we come to Thomas Stevenson, 
we shall find in him even more of the habits of 
mind and temper which distinguished his more cele- 
brated son. 

Stevenson's mother was the youngest daughter of 
the Rev. Lewis Balfour, D.D., minister of Colinton, 
a parish on the stream known as the Water of Leith, 
four miles to the south- west of Edinburgh. The earli- 
est known member of this family was one Alexander 
Balfour, placed in charge of the King's Cellar by 
James IV., in 1499, and of the Queen's Cellar in 
1507; he held the lands of Inchrye in Fife, and was 
in all probability one of the Balfours of Mountqu- 
hannie, a numerous family, high in the favour of 
King James. The descendants of Alexander were 
chiefly ministers, advocates, or merchants. 

His grandson James Balfour, one of the ministers 
of St. Giles', Edinburgh, from 1589 to 1613, married 
a niece of Andrew Melville the Reformer, and was, 
as a brass in his church now records, "one of those 



12 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

who, summoned by James VI. to Hampton Court 
in 1606, refused to surrender their principles to his 
desires for the establishment of Episcopacy in Scot- 
land." James, born 1680, whose father was one of 
the Governors of the Darien Company, bought the 
estate of Pilrig, lying between Edinburgh and Leith, 
with which the family has ever since been connected, 
and to which David Balfour is brought in Catriona. 
The laird whom David met was James, born 1705, 
who, having studied at Leyden, became Professor of 
Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, 
and then exchanged this Chair for that of the Laws 
of Nature and Nations. His wife was a daughter of 
Sir John Elphinstone of Logie and granddaughter 
of Sir Gilbert Elliot, known as Lord Minto, a judge 
of the Court of Session. It was through this con- 
nection that Stevenson was able to say, "I have 
shaken a spear in the Debateable Land and shouted 
the slogan of the Elliots." Sir Gilbert's grand- 
mother, Margaret Elliot, was a daughter of "Auld 
Wat Scott" of Harden and Mary Scott his wife, 
known as The Flower of Yarrow, who were thus com- 
mon ancestors of Louis Stevenson and of Sir Walter 
Scott. John Balfour, son of the Professor and father 
of the minister of Colinton, married his cousin Jean 
Whyte; and so by this marriage Stevenson's mother 
was a second cousin of the novelist, Major George 
Whyte-Melville. 

Lewis Balfour was born at Pilrig in 1777; about 
the age of twenty he showed symptoms of a weak 
chest, and was sent for a winter to the Isle of Wight 
with the most entire success. On returning, he took 



HIS ANCESTORS 13 

orders, went to his first Ayrshire parish, and there 
fell in love with, and married, a daughter of Dr. Smith 
of Galston, the Dr. Smith who in Burns's Holy Fair 
"opens out his cauld harangues on practice and on 
morals." In 1823 he came to the parish of Colinton, 
and there remained until his death thirty-seven years 
later. In 1844 he lost his wife, a woman of great 
personal beauty and force of character, and the care 
of the household fell into the hands of his eldest un- 
married daughter. His is the manse of Memories 
and Portraits, the favourite home of his grandson's 
childhood. The essay in question describes him "as 
a man of singular simplicity of nature; unemotional, 
and hating the display of what he felt; standing 
contented on the old ways; a lover of his life and in- 
nocent habits to the end. We children admired him 
— partly for his beautiful face and silver hair, for 
none more than children are concerned for beauty 
and, above all, for beauty in the old; partly for the 
solemn light in which we beheld him once a week, 
the observed of all observers, in the pulpit. But his 
strictness and distance, the effect, I now fancy, of old 
age, slow blood, and settled habit, oppressed us with 
a kind of terror. ... He had no idea of spoiling 
children, leaving all that to my aunt; he had fared 
hard himself, and blubbered under the rod in the last 
century; and his ways were still Spartan for the 
young. . . . When not abroad, he sat much alone, 
writing sermons or letters to his scattered family in 
a dark and cold room with a library of bloodless 
books — and these lonely hours wrapped him in the 
greater gloom for our imaginations. But the study 



H LIFE OF STEVENSON 

had a redeeming grace in many Indian pictures, 
gaudily coloured and dear to young eyes. I cannot 
depict (for I have no such passions now) the greed 
with which I beheld them; and when I was once 
sent in to say a psalm to my grandfather, I went, 
quaking indeed with fear, but at the same time glow- 
ing with hope that if I said it well, he might reward 
me with an Indian picture. 

"Thy foot He'll not let slide, nor will 
He slumber that thee keeps," 

it ran — a strange conglomerate of the unpronounce- 
able, a sad model to set in childhood before one who 
was himself to be a versifier, and a task in recitation 
that really merited reward." 

"And I must suppose the old man thought so too, 
and was either touched or amused by the perform- 
ance; for he took me in his arms with most unwonted 
tenderness and kissed me, and gave me a little kindly 
sermon for my psalm; so that, for that day, we were 
clerk and parson." The picture was not given (how 
should it have been?) but on that, and more than 
one other occasion, the minister showed himself in 
a gracious and sympathetic mood to his little kins- 
man. "Try as I please," wrote the grandson in later 
days, "I cannot join myself on with the reverend 
doctor; and all the while, no doubt, and even as I 
write the phrase, he moves in my blood, and whispers 
words to me, and sits efficient in the very knot and 
centre of my being." Yet even if no individual 
traits or physical resemblances can be traced to the 
old minister, much of the general Scottish cast of 



HIS ANCESTORS 15 

character in Stevenson — the "strong Scots accent of 
the mind" — was confirmed by this strain; and it is 
evident that his intensity, his ethical preoccupations, 
and, as he himself says, his "love of preaching" 
were due, at all events in part, to the fact that he was 
a "grandson of the manse." 

Such, at any rate, was the history of his maternal 
ancestors, the Balfours, a family who possessed in a 
high degree the domestic virtues of the Lowland Scot. 
Till after the date I have reached, few of the cadets 
ever sought their fortunes abroad, though the next 
generation was more enterprising, and four out of 
Mrs. Stevenson's five brothers spent much of their 
lives in India or New Zealand. But for the most 
part the family were stay-at-home folk, and adven- 
tures, which are to the adventurous, came not near 
their peaceful dwellings. 

If it be difficult to follow his ancestors, it is man- 
ifestly impossible to find any safe ground for specu- 
lating on the race to which Stevenson belonged. 
None of his forbears for many centuries, so far as we 
can tell, were newcomers to Scotland; and it is 
probable that in him, as in almost any other native 
of the same region, several strains of the long- 
established races were combined. The word "Bal- 
four," as Cluny reminds us in Kidnapped, is "good 
Gaelic," its meaning being "cold croft or farm." 
The place of that name is in Fife. The estate was 
held by the Bethunes for five hundred years, until 
recently it passed again into the hands of a Balfour 
"of that ilk." But the appellation of a family need 
signify no more than the former possession of some 



16 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

holding to which the Celts had already given a name, 
and the Balfours of Pilrig belonged apparently to an 
East Lowland type. Renfrew, on the other hand, 
was part of the Celtic kingdom of the Britons of 
Alclyde, and it was in that territory that the name 
of Stevenson had been chiefly found, and that this 
particular family was settled. Neither name nor 
locality, however, is any sure guide to an origin so 
remote; and we can be certain of no more than this, 
that Louis Stevenson and his father and grandfather 
exhibited many moods and tendencies of mind at- 
tributed to the Celtic race. 



CHAPTER II 

HIS PARENTS 

"We are the pledge of their dear and joyful union, we have 
been the solicitude of their days and the anxiety of their nights, 
we have made them, though by no will of ours, to carry the 
burden of our sins, sorrows, and physical infirmities. ... A 
good son, who can fulfil what is expected of him, has done his 
work in life. He has to redeem the sins of many, and restore 
the world's confidence in children."— R. L. S., "Reflections 
and Remarks on Human Life," Addenda, Thistle ed., vol. 
22, p. 622. 

WITHOUT a knowledge of his parents it 
would be hard to understand the man 
whose life and character are set forth in 
these pages. Yet of Thomas Stevenson, at any rate, 
I should despair of presenting any adequate image, 
were it not for the sketch in Memories and Portraits, 
and an account of his boyhood, written by his son in 
1887, and as yet unpublished, which would have 
formed a later chapter of A Family of Engineers. 

He was born in 1818, the youngest son of Robert 
Stevenson, and one of a family of thirteen children. 

"He had his education at a private school, kept 
by a capable but very cruel man called Brown, in 
Nelson Street, and then at the High School at Edin- 
burgh. His first year was in the old building down 
Infirmary Street, and I have often heard him tell 
how he took part in the procession to the new and 
beautiful place upon the Calton Hill. Piper was his 
master, a fellow much given to thrashing. He never 

17 



i8 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

seems to have worked for any class that he attended; 
and in Piper's took a place about half-way between 
the first and last of a hundred and eighty boys. 

"For there was this difference between father and 
son. Robert took education and success at school 
for a thing of infinite import; to Thomas, in his young 
independence, it all seemed Vanity of Vanities. In- 
deed, there seems to have been nothing more rooted 
in him than his contempt for all the ends, processes, 
and ministers of education. Tutor was ever a by- 
word with him; 'positively tutorial,' he would say of 
people or manners he despised; and with rare con- 
sistency, he bravely encouraged me to neglect my 
lessons, and never so much as asked me my place 
in school. . . . 

" My father's life, in the meantime, and the truly 
formative parts of his education, lay entirely in his 
hours of play. 

"No. i Baxter's Place, my grandfather's house, 
must have been a paradise for boys. It was of great 
size, with an infinity of cellars below, and of garrets, 
apple-lofts, etc., above; and it had a long garden, 
which ran down to the foot of the Calton Hill, with 
an orchard that yearly filled the apple-loft, and a 
building at the foot frequently besieged and defended 
by the boys, where a poor golden eagle, trophy of 
some of my grandfather's Hebridean voyages, pined 
and screamed itself to death. Its front was Leith 
Walk with its traffic; at one side a very deserted lane, 
with the office door, a carpenter's shop, and the like; 
and behind, the big, open slopes of the Calton Hill. 
Within, there was the seemingly rather awful rule of 



HIS PARENTS 19 

the old gentleman, tempered, I fancy, by the mild and 
devout mother with her 'Keep me's.' There was 
a coming and going of odd, out-of-the-way char- 
acters, skippers, light-keepers, masons, and foremen 
of all sorts, whom my grandfather, in his patri- 
archal fashion, liked to have about the house, and 
who were a never-failing delight to the boys. Tutors 
shed a gloom for an hour or so in the evening, . . . 
and these and that accursed schoolgoing were the 
black parts of their life." 

Robert Stevenson had intended only one of his 
sons to follow his own profession. But in the end their 
natural tastes prevailed, and no less than three of 
the brothers entered the business, practised it at large 
with great ability and success, and were all three, 
conjointly or in turn, appointed to the official post 
their father and grandfather had held of Engineer to 
the Board of Northern Lights. Thomas Stevenson 
did much valuable work in lighthouse building and 
in the improvement of rivers and harbours, but it is 
in connection with the illumination of lighthouses 
that his name will be remembered. He brought to 
perfection the revolving light, and himself invented 
"the azimuthal condensing system." More familiar 
to the world at large, if less remarkable, are the louvre- 
boarded screens which he applied to the protection 
of meteorological instruments. He became more- 
over a recognised authority on engineering; he gave 
much weighty evidence before Parliamentary com- 
mittees; and his position in the scientific world was 
marked in 1884 by his election to the Presidentship 
of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. 



20 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

His entire life was devoted to the unremitting pur- 
suit of a scientific profession, in which it was his dear- 
est wish to see his son following in his footsteps; yet 
it was from him that Louis derived all the romantic and 
artistic elements that drew him away from engi- 
neering, and were the chief means by which he be- 
came an acknowledged master of his art. 

The apparent inconsistencies of the father were 
numerous, but all of them were such as add force 
and picturesqueness to a character, and only increased 
the affection of those who knew and understood him 
most thoroughly. 

"He was a man," writes his son, "of a somewhat 
antique strain; with a blended sternness and softness 
that was wholly Scottish and at first somewhat be- 
wildering; with a profound essential melancholy of 
disposition and (what often accompanies it) the most 
humorous geniality in company; shrewd and child- 
ish; passionately attached, passionately prejudiced; a 
man of many extremes, many faults of temper, and 
no very stable foothold for himself among life's 
troubles. Yet he was a wise adviser; many men, and 
these not inconsiderable, took counsel with him ha- 
bitually. ... He had excellent taste, though whim- 
sical and partial; . . . took a lasting pleasure in 
prints and pictures; . . . and, though he read little, 
was constant to his favourite books. He was a 
strong Conservative or, as he preferred to call him- 
self, a Tory; except in so far as his views were 
modified by a hot-headed chivalrous sentiment for 
women. He was actually in favour of a marriage 
law under which any woman might have a divorce 



HIS PARENTS 21 

for the asking, and no man on any ground whatever; 
and the same sentiment found another expression in 
a Magdalen Mission in Edinburgh, founded and 
largely supported by himself. This was but one of 
the many channels of his public generosity; his pri- 
vate was equally unrestrained. The Church of Scot- 
land, of which he held the doctrines (though in a sense 
of his own), and to which he bore a clansman's loy- 
alty, profited often by his time and money; and 
though, from a morbid sense of his own unworthiness, 
he would never consent to be an office-bearer, his 
advice was often sought, and he served the church 
on many committees. What he perhaps valued 
highest in his work were his contributions to the 
defence of Christianity; one of which, in particular, 
was praised by Hutchison Stirling, and reprinted 
at the request of Professor Crawford. 

"His sense of his own unworthiness I have called 
morbid; morbid, too, were his sense of the fleeting- 
ness of life and his concern for death. He had never 
accepted the conditions of man's life or his own char- 
acter; and his inmost thoughts were ever tinged with 
the Celtic melancholy. Cases of conscience were 
sometimes grievous to him, and that delicate employ- 
ment of a scientific witness cost him many qualms. 
But he found respite from these troublesome humours 
in his work, in his lifelong study of natural science, in 
the society of those he loved, and in his daily walks, 
which now would carry him far into the country 
with some congenial friend, and now keep him 
dangling about the town from one old book-shop 
to another, and scraping romantic acquaintance with 



22 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

every dog that passed. His talk, compounded of so 
much sterling sense and so much freakish humour, 
and clothed in language so apt, droll, and emphatic, 
was a perpetual delight to all who knew him before 
the clouds began to settle on his mind. His use of 
language was both just and picturesque; and when 
at the beginning of his illness he began to feel the 
ebbing of his power, it was strange and painful to 
hear him reject one word after another as inade- 
quate, and at length desist from the search and leave 
his phrase unfinished rather than finish it without 
propriety. It was perhaps another Celtic trait that 
his affections and emotions, passionate as these were 
and liable to passionate ups and downs, found the 
most eloquent expression both in words and ges- 
tures. Love, anger, and indignation shone through 
him and broke forth in imagery, like what we read 
of Southern races. For all these emotional extremes, 
and in spite of the melancholy ground of his character, 
he had upon the whole a happy life; nor was he less 
fortunate in his death, which at the last came to 
him unaware." 

The characteristics of the father in his boyhood 
might be ascribed with little alteration to his son. 
The circumstances differed, but the spirit, the freaks, 
and the idleness were the same. Every night of his 
life Thomas Stevenson made up stories by which he 
put himself to sleep, dealing perpetually " with ships, 
roadside inns, robbers, old sailors, and commercial 
travellers before the era of steam." With these and 
their like he soothed his son's troubled nights in 
childhood, and when the son grew up and made 



HIS PARENTS 23 

stories of his own, he found no critic more unsparing 
than his father, and none more ready to take fire at 
11 his own kind of picturesque." 

The differences between the pair were slight, the 
points of resemblance many. The younger man de- 
voted his life to art and not to science, and the hold 
of dogma upon him was early relaxed. But the 
humour and the melancholy, the sternness and the 
softness, the attachments and the prejudices, the 
chivalry, the generosity, the Celtic temperament, and 
the sensitive conscience passed direct from father to 
son in proportions but slightly varied, and to some 
who knew them both well the father was the more 
remarkable of the two. One period of misunder- 
standing they had, but it was brief, and might have 
been avoided had either of the pair been less sincere 
or less in earnest. Afterwards, and perhaps as a 
consequence, their comprehension and appreciation 
of each other grew complete, and their attachment 
was even deeper than that usually subsisting between 
father and only son. In the conditions of their 
lives there was this further difference: if the son 
missed the healthy boyhood, full of games and of 
companions, he was spared at the last the failure 
which he also dreaded; no less fortunate than his 
father in the unconsciousness of his death, he died 
before his prime and the fulness of his power, " in mid- 
career laying out vast projects," and so, "trailing 
with him clouds of glory," he was taken away as one 
whom the gods loved. 

Of Mrs. Thomas Stevenson not a line of any 
sketch remains among the work of her son : a want 



24 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

easily explained by the fact that she survived him. 
It is the more necessary to supply in some measure 
this deficiency, as the warmth of Louis' gratitude to 
his nurse has unjustly reacted to the prejudice of 
his mother, and has quite wrongly been supposed by 
those who did not know them to indicate neglect on 
one side and on the other a lack of affection. 

In person she was tall, slender, and graceful; and 
her face and fair complexion retained their beauty, 
as her figure and walk preserved their elasticity, to 
the last. Her vivacity and brightness were most at- 
tractive; she made on strangers a quick and lasting 
impression, and the letters written on the news of her 
death attest the devotion and number of her friends. 
As a hostess she had great social charm, and her 
hospitality was but the expression of her true kindli- 
ness of heart. 

Her undaunted spirit led her when nearly sixty to 
accompany her son, first to America, and then, in a 
racing schooner, through the remotest groups of the 
Pacific, finally to settle with him in the disturbed 
spot where he had chosen his home. 

She had in the highest degree that readiness for 
enjoyment which makes light of discomfort, and 
turns into a holiday any break of settled routine. 
Her desire to be pleased, her prompt interest in 
any experience, however new or unexpected, her 
resolute refusal to see the unpleasant side of things, 
all had their counterpart in her son, enabling him 
to pass through the many dark hours that would 
have borne far more heavily upon his father's tem- 
perament. 



HIS PARENTS 25 

Of her devotion and of her incessant thought for 
the boy there can be no question. I have before me 
as I write a series of pocket-diaries, complete (but for 
the second year) from 185 1 until the year of her 
death. The earlier books are occupied exclusively 
with her husband and her child, and in the later 
volumes these two are still the staple of her entries. 
Louis' place in class is scrupulously noted, and that, 
we may be sure, with no encouragement from his 
father. When he was small, she read to him a great 
deal, and to her he owed his first acquaintance 
with much that is best in literature. Almost every 
scrap of his writing that ever passed into her hands 
was treasured. His first efforts at tales or histories, 
taken down by herself, or some other amanuensis, 
before he was able or willing to write; nearly every 
letter he ever sent her; every compliment to him, 
and every word of praise — all were carefully pre- 
served, long before he showed any definite promise 
of becoming famous; and by her method and accu- 
racy she was able to record for his biographer, with 
hardly an exception, where he spent each month of 
his life. 

The son's attachment to his mother was no less 
deep and lasting. Through all her illnesses and 
whenever she needed his care, he was always most 
sedulous and affectionate, displaying at times a ten- 
derness almost feminine. The most irregular of cor- 
respondents, he was well-nigh regular to her; master 
of his pen though he was, several times after he had 
become a man of letters he bursts out into impatience 
at the difficulty he finds in expressing to her and to 



26 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

his father the depth of his affection and gratitude to 
them both. 

After his father's death, when the doctors had 
ordered him to go to America, if he wanted to live, 
he wrote to her: "Not only would we not go to 
America without you; we should not persist in try- 
ing it, if we did not believe that it would be on the 
whole the best for you." From that time, but for 
two absences in Scotland, she made her home with 
him and his family, and had the reward of realising 
that the exile which severed him from so many of 
his friends had brought her to an even more inti- 
mate knowledge of his life and an even closer place 
in his affection. 




8 Howard Place Edinburgh 
Birthplace of Stevenson 



CHAPTER III 

INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD— 1850-59 

"I please myself often by saying that I had a Covenanting 
childhood." — R. L. S., MS. fragment. 

"I am one of the few people in the world who do not forget 
their own lives." — R. L. S., Letters, iii. 107. 

ROBERT LEWIS BALFOUR STEVENSON 
was born at No. 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh, 
on the 13th November 1850, and a few days 
after his birth was baptised by his grandfather, the 
minister of Colinton, according to the Scots custom, 
in his father's house. He was called after his two 
grandfathers, and to their names that of his mother's 
family was added. 1 

1 It was as Robert Louis Stevenson that he was known to all the 
world, and the earlier variations of his name, remembered but by 
few, are of small importance. Nevertheless it may be as well to 
set them down here. 

In his earliest letters, and down to 1865, the boy signed himself 
"R. Stevenson." After that he occasionally used "R. L. B. Ste- 
venson," but in 1868 asked his mother in place of this to address 
him as "Robert Lewis." For the next five years he was generally 
but not invariably "R. L. Stevenson," until about 1873 the final 
change is marked by his usage and an undated letter to C. Baxter 
belonging to this period (now the property of the Savile Club). 
"After several years of feeble and ineffectual endeavour with regard 
to my third initial (a thing I loathe), I have been led to put myself 
out of reach of such accident in the future by taking my first two 
names in full." 

The change of the name of Lewis from the Scots form to the 
French was made when he was about eighteen; the exact date is 
not easy to fix on account of his practice of using the intitial only 
in his signature at that period. It was only the spelling that Steven- 
son changed and never the pronunciation: Lewis he remained at all 
times in the mouth of his family and of his intimate friends. 

27 



28 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

His birthplace was the home which Thomas Ste- 
venson had prepared for his bride two years before; a 
small, unpretentious, comfortable stone house, form- 
ing part of a row still standing, situated on low ground 
just to the north of the Water of Leith. Two and a 
half years later this was changed for No. i Inverleith 
Terrace, a more commodious dwelling on the other 
side of the same road; but that, having three outside 
walls, proved too cold for the delicate boy. Accord- 
ingly, in 1857, the little family of three — for Louis 
remained an only child — moved half a mile further 
south into what was then the centre of the New Town, 
and occupied No. 17 Heriot Row, which continued 
to be their home in Edinburgh for thirty years. This 
was a substantial house of grey stone, built with the 
solidity so customary in Scotland and now so unusual 
in the South, looking across the Queen Street Gar- 
dens, where the lilacs bloom in spring and the pipe of 
the blackbird may still be heard; while from its back 
windows could be seen the hills of "the kingdom of 
Fife." 

For the first year of his life the infant seemed 
healthy and made satisfactory progress. But with 
his mother's brightness of disposition he had unfor- 
tunately inherited also from her a weakness of chest 
and a susceptibility to cold, which affected the whole 
course of his life. 

"My ill-health principally chronicles itself by the 
terrible long nights that I lay awake, troubled contin- 
ually with a hacking, exhausting cough, and praying 
for sleep or morning from the bottom of my shaken 
little body. I principally connect these nights, how- 



INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD 29 

ever, with our third house, in Heriot Row; and can- 
not mention them without a grateful testimony to 
the unwearied sympathy and long-suffering displayed 
to me on a hundred such occasions by my good nurse. 
It seems to me that I should have died if I had been 
left there alone to cough and weary in the darkness. 
How well I remember her lifting me out of bed, 
carrying me to the window, and showing me one 
or two lit windows up in Queen Street across the 
dark belt of gardens; where also, we told each other, 
there might be sick little boys and their nurses wait- 
ing, like us, for the morning. Other night scenes 
connected with my ill-health were the little sallies of 
delirium that used to waken me out of a feverish 
sleep in such agony of terror as, thank God, I have 
never suffered since. My father had generally to 
come up and sit by my bedside, and feign conversa- 
tions with guards or coachmen or inn-keepers, until 
I was gradually quieted and brought to myself; but 
it was long after one of those paroxysms before I 
could bear to be left alone." 

"That I was eminently religious, there can be no 
doubt. I had an extreme terror of Hell, implanted 
in me, I suppose, by my good nurse, which used to 
haunt me terribly on stormy nights, when the wind 
had broken loose and was going about the town like 
a bedlamite. I remember that the noises on such 
occasions always grouped themselves for me into the 
sound of a horseman, or rather a succession of horse- 
men, riding furiously past the bottom of the street 
and away up the hill into town; I think even now that 
I hear the terrible howl of his passage, and the clink- 



3 o LIFE OF STEVENSON 

ing that I used to attribute to his bit and stirrups. 
On such nights I would lie awake and pray and cry, 
until I prayed and cried myself asleep; and if I can 
form any notion of what an earnest prayer should 
be, I imagine that mine were such. . . . 

" Although I was never done drawing and painting, 
and even kept on doing so until I was seventeen or 
eighteen, I never had any real pictorial vision, and 
instead of trying to represent what I saw, was merely 
imitating the general appearance of other people's 
representations. I never drew a picture of anything 
that was before me, but always from fancy, a sure 
sign of the absence of artistic eyesight; and I beau- 
tifully illustrated my lack of real feeling for art, by a 
very early speech: 'Mamma,' said I, T have drawed 
a man. Shall I draw his soul now?" 

His nurse was, it will already be seen, even more 
than is usual with children, an important factor in 
his life. When he was eighteen months old, Alison 
Cunningham — "Cummie" to him for the rest of his 
days — came to him and watched over his childhood 
with the most intense devotion. She refused, it is 
said, an offer of marriage, that she might not have to 
leave her charge, and she remained with the family 
long after the care of him had passed out of women's 
hands, never taking another place, as indeed she had 
no need to do. 1 Her true reward has been a monu- 
ment of gratitude for which a parallel is hard to find. 
At twenty (an age when young men are not gener- 
ally very tender to such memories) Louis wrote the 
paper on Nurses printed in Juvenilia. Fifteen years 
1 She died in July, 1913, aged 91. 



INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD 31 

later the dedication of the Child's Garden was '''To 
Alison Cunningham, From Her Boy," and this was 
but the preface to one of the happiest sets of verses 
in one of the happiest books. Of all his works he 
sent her copies; throughout his life he wrote letters 
to her; when he had a house, he had her to stay 
with him, and even proposed to bring her out on a 
visit to Samoa. In another fragment of autobiog- 
raphy he has again described her services: "My 
recollection of the long nights when I was kept 
awake by coughing are only relieved by the thought 
of the tenderness of my nurse and second mother 
(for my first will not be jealous), Alison Cunningham. 
She was more patient than I can suppose of an angel; 
hours together she would help and console me . . . 
till the whole sorrow of the night was at an end 
with the arrival of the first of that long string of 
country carts, that in the dark hours of the morning, 
with the neighing of horses, the cracking of the 
whips, the shouts of drivers, and a hundred other 
wholesome noises, creaked, rolled, and pounded past 
my window." 

Thus she tended his bodily life, watchfully and un- 
weariedly: to his spiritual welfare, as she conceived 
it, she gave, if possible, even greater care. His father 
and mother were both genuinely religious people: 
the former clung, with a desperate intensity, to the 
rigid tenets of his faith; the latter was a true ''child 
of the manse," and visited and befriended churches 
and missions wherever she went. But if Louis spent, 
as he tells us, "a Covenanting childhood," it was to 
Cummie that this was due. Besides the Bible and 



32 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

the Shorter Catechism, which he had also from his 
mother, Cummie rilled him with a love of her own 
favourite authors, M'Cheyne and others, Presby- 
terians of the straitest doctrine. It was she, in all 
probability, who first introduced him to " The Cam- 
eronian Dream." That poem, he afterwards told 
Edmund Gosse, made the most indelible impression 
on his fancy, and was the earliest piece of literature 
which awakened in him the sentiment of romantic 
Scottish history. 

From her, too, he first heard some of the writings 
of the Covenanters, Wodrow, Peden, and others, who 
directly influenced his choice of subjects, and accord- 
ing to his own testimony (Letters, iv. 266) had a great 
share in the formation of his style. A special favour- 
ite also was an old copy of A Cloud of Witnesses, 
which had belonged to his nurse's grandmother. 

In matters of conduct Cummie was for no half- 
measures. Cards were the Devil's books. Mr. and 
Mrs, Stevenson played whist, decorous family whist 
— the mother had the keenest zest for all games — 
and Louis could remember praying fervently with his 
nurse that it might not be visited on them to their 
perdition. The novel and the playhouse were alike 
anathema to her; and this would seem no very likely 
opening for the career of one who was to be a novelist 
and write plays as well. For her pupil entered fully ' 
into the spirit of her ordinances, and insisted on a 
most rigorous observance of her code. 

In spite of her restrictions, Cummie was full of life 
and merriment. She danced and sang to her boy, 
and read to him most dramatically. She herself tells 



INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD 33 

how, the last time she ever saw him, he said to her 
"before a room full of people, 'It's you that gave me 
a passion for the drama, Cummie.' 'Me, Master 
Lou,' I said; 'I never put foot inside a playhouse 
in my life.' 'Ay, woman,' said he; 'but it was 
the grand dramatic way ye had of reciting the 
hymns.' " 

It was in the end of 1856 that Louis was for the first 
time experiencing "the toils and vigils and distresses" 
of composition. His uncle, David Stevenson, offered 
to his children and nephews a prize for the best 
history of Moses. Louis was allowed to try for it by 
dictating his version to his mother, and to this he 
devoted five successive Sunday evenings. A Bible 
picture-book was given to him as an extra prize, and, 
adds his mother, "from that time forward it was the 
'desire of his heart to be an author." 

For this he had already a qualification, which chil- 
dren either seldom possess, or of which at any rate 
they but seldom remember the possession. In a late 
reminiscence he greatly applauds his nurse's ear and 
speaks of her reading to him " the works of others as 
a poet would scarce dare to read his own; gloating 
on the rhythm, dwelling with delight on the asso- 
nances and alliterations." So he tells us of the delight 
he already took in words for their own sake, and of 
the thrill which the mere sound of "Jehovah Tsid- 
kenu" produced in him without reference to any 
possible meaning. To the same source I must refer 
for his account of the imagery called up in his mind 
from local surroundings by the metrical version of the 
twenty- third Psalm; the "pastures green" being 



34 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

stubble-fields by the Water of Leith, and "death's 
dark vale" a certain archway in the Warriston 
Cemetery. 

But in these suburbs only a part of his childhood 
was spent. Of other and happier playing-places he 
has left a record, written probably about 1872, and 
manifestly the quarry from which was drawn most 
of the material for "The Manse" in Memories and 
Portraits. 

From this it may be seen that Stevenson, alike at 
two-and-twenty and at five-and-thirty, remembered 
his childhood as it is given to few grown men and 
women to remember, and the paper contains the raw 
material or perhaps rather the prose version of many 
passages in the Child's Garden of Verses. 

"One consequence of my ill-health was my fre- 
quent residence at Colinton Manse. Out of my 
reminiscences of life in that dear place, all the 
morbid and painful elements have disappeared. That 
was my golden age: et ego in Arcadia vixi. There 
is something so fresh and wholesome about all that 
went on at Colinton, compared with what I recollect 
of the town, that I can hardly, even in my own mind, 
knit the two chains of reminiscences together; they 
look like stories of two different people, ages apart in 
time and quite dissimilar in character." 

" The Water of Leith, after passing under Colinton 
Bridge, makes a curve, following the line of the high, 
steep, wooded bank on the convex, but on the concave 
enclosing a round flat promontory, which was once, I 
suppose, a marsh, and then a riverside meadow. . . . 
Immediately after crossing the bridge the roadway 



INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD 35 

forks into two; one branch whereof tends upward to 
the entrance of the churchyard; while the other, green 
with grass, slopes downward, between two blank 
walls and past the cottage of the snuff-mill, to the 
gate of the manse. 

" There were two ways of entering the manse gar- 
den : one the two-winged gate that admitted the old 
phaeton, and the other a door for pedestrians on the 
side next the kirk. . . . 

. . . "In the garden on summer afternoons the 
sloping lawn was literally steeped in sunshine; and all 
the day long, from the impending wood, there came 
the sweetest and fullest chorus of merles and thrushes 
and all manner of birds, that it ever was my lot to 
hear. The lawn was just the centre of all this — a 
perfect goblet for sunshine, and the Dionysius' ear 
for a whole forest of bird-songs. This lawn was a 
favourite playground; a lilac that hung its scented 
blossom out of the glossy semicirque of laurels was 
identified by my playmates and myself as that tree 
whose very shadow was death. In the great laurel 
at the corner I have often lain perdu, with a toy-gun 
in my hand, waiting for a herd of antelopes to defile 
past me down the carriage drive, and waiting (need 
I add?) in vain. Down at the corner of the lawn 
next the snuff-mill wall there was a practicable pas- 
sage through the evergreens and a door in the wall, 
which let you out on a small patch of sand, left in the 
corner by the river. Just across, the woods rose like 
a wall into the sky; and their lowest branches trailed 
in the black waters. Naturally, it was very sunless. 
. . . There was nothing around and above you but 



36 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

the shadowy foliage of trees. It seemed a marvel 
how they clung to the steep slope on the other side; 
and, indeed, they were forced to grow far apart, and 
showed the ground between them hid by an under- 
growth of butter-bur/ hemlock, and nettle. ... I 
wish I could give you an idea of this place, of the 
gloom, of the black slow water, of the strange wet 
smell, of the draggled vegetation on the far side 
whither the current took everything, and of the in- 
comparably fine, rich yellow sand, without a grit 
in the whole of it, and moving below your feet with 
scarcely more resistance than a liquid. ... I re- 
member climbing down one day to a place where we 
discovered an island of this treacherous material. O 
the great discovery! On we leapt in a moment; but 
on feeling the wet, sluicy island flatten out into a 
level with the river, and the brown water gathering 
about our feet, we were off it again as quickly. It 
was a l quicksand,' we said; and thenceforward the 
island was held in much the same regard as the lilac- 
tree on the lawn. 

"The wall of the church faces to the manse, but 
the churchyard is on a level with the top of the wall, 
that is to say, some eight or ten feet above the garden, 
and the tombstones are visible from the enclosure 
of the manse. The church, with its campanile, was 
near the edge, so that on Sundays we could see the 
cluster of people about the door. Under the retaining 
wall was a somewhat dark pathway, extending from 
the stable to the far end of the garden, and called 
'The Witches' Walk,' from a game we used to play 
in it. At the stable end it took its rise under a yew, 



INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD 37 

which is one of the glories of the village. Under the 
circuit of its wide, black branches, it was always 
dark and cool, and there was a green scurf over all 
the trunk among which glistened the round bright 
drops of resin. . . . This was a sufficiently gloomy 
commencement for the Witches' Walk; but its chief 
horror was the retaining wall of the kirkyard itself, 
about which we were always hovering at even with 
the strange attraction of fear. Often after nightfall 
have I looked long and eagerly from the manse win- 
dows to see the 'spunkies' playing among the graves, 
and have been much chagrined at my failure; and 
this very name of spunkie recalls to me the most 
important of our discoveries in the supernatural walk. 
Henrietta, Willie (my cousins) and I, just about dusk, 
discovered a burning eye looking out from a hole in 
the retaining wall, in the corner where it joins the 
back of the stable. In hushed tones we debated the 
question; whether it was some bird of ill omen roost- 
ing in the cranny of the wall, or whether the hole 
pierced right through into a grave, and it was some 
dead man who was sitting up in his coffin and watch- 
ing us with that strange fixed eye. If you remember 
the level of the churchyard, you will see that this 
explanation suited pretty well; so we drew a wheel- 
barrow into the corner; one after another got up 
and looked in; and when the last was satisfied, we 
turned round, took to our heels, and never stopped 
till we were in the shelter of the house. We our- 
selves, in our after-discussions, thought it might have 
been the bird, though we preferred the more tre- 
mendous explanation. But for my own part, I sim- 



38 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

ply believe that we saw nothing at all. The fact is, 
we would have given anything to have seen a ghost, 
or to persuade ourselves that we had seen a ghost. 
... I remember going down into the cellars of our 
own house intown, in company with another, . . . 
and persuading myself that I saw a face looking at 
me from round a corner; and I may even confess, 
since the laws against sorcery have been for some time 
in abeyance, that I essayed at divers times to bring 
up the devil, founding my incantations on no more 
abstruse a guide than Skelt's Juvenile Drama of Der 
Freischutz. I am about at the end of horrors now; 
even out of the Witches' Walk, you saw the manse 
facing towards you, with its back to the river and 
the wooded bank, and the bright flower-plots and 
stretches of comfortable vegetables in front and on 
each side of it; flower-plots and vegetable borders, 
by the way, on which it was almost death to set foot, 
and about which we held a curious belief — namely, 
that my grandfather went round and measured any 
footprints that he saw to compare the measurement 
at night with the boots put out for brushing; to avoid 
which we were accustomed, by a strategic movement 
of the foot, to make the mark longer. . . . 

"So much for the garden; now follow me into the 
house. On entering by the front-door you had be- 
fore you a stone-paved lobby, with doors on either 
hand, that extended the whole length of the house. 
There stood a case of foreign birds, two or three mar- 
ble deities from India, and a lily of the Nile in a pot; 
and at the far end the stairs shut in the view. . . . 
With how many games of "tig" or brick-building in 



INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD 39 

the forenoon is the long low dining-room connected 
in my mind. 

..." But that room is principally dear to me from 
memories of the time when I, a sickly child, stayed 
there alone. First, in the forenoon about eleven, 
how my aunt 1 used to open the storeroom at the one 
end and give me out three Albert biscuits and some 
calf-foot jelly in a black pot with a sort of raised 
white pattern over it. That storeroom was a most 
voluptuous place with its piles of biscuit boxes and 
spice tins, the rack for buttered eggs, the little win- 
dow that let in sunshine and the flickering shadow of 
leaves. 

. . . "But I come to the crown of my dining- 
room reminiscences, for after dinner, when the lamp 
was brought in and shaded, and my aunt sat down to 
read in the rocking-chair, there was a great open 
space behind the sofa left entirely in the shadow. 
This was my especial domain: once round the cor- 
ner of the sofa, I had left the lightsome, merry in- 
doors, and was out in the cool, dark night. I could 

1 "I have mentioned my aunt. In her youth she was a wit and a 
beauty, very imperious, managing and self-sufficient. But as she 
grew up, she began to suffice for all the family as well. An ac- 
cident on horseback made her nearly deaf and blind, and suddenly 
transformed this wilful empress into the most serviceable and 
amiable of women. There were thirteen of the Balfours as (oddly 
enough) there were of the Stevensons also, and the children of the 
family came home to her to be nursed, to be educated, to be moth- 
ered, from the infanticidal climate of India. There must some- 
times have been half a score of us children about the manse; and 
all were born a second time from Aunt Jane's tenderness." Jane 
Whyte Balfour, "chief of our Aunts," of A Child's Garden of Verses, 
died at the age of ninety-one in 1907, the last of her generation, 
stone deaf and nearly blind, but with a keener interest in all be- 
longing to her than any of her juniors, and a greater zest in life. 



4 o LIFE OF STEVENSON 

almost see the stars. I looked out of the back win- 
dow at the bushes outside. I lay in the darkest cor- 
ners, rifle in hand, like a hunter in a lonely bivouac. 
I crawled about stealthily watching the people in the 
circle of lamplight, with some vague remembrance 
of a novel that my aunt had read to me, where some 
fellow went out from 'the heated ballroom ' and 
moralised in the 'Park.'" 

His mother and his nurse also, as we have seen, 
read to him, indefatigably, and so it was not until 
he was eight years old that he took any pleasure in 
reading to himself. The consciousness of this de- 
light came upon him suddenly; its coming was con- 
nected in his memory with a book called Paul Blake, 
"a visit to the country, and an experience unforget- 
table. The day had been warm; Henrietta and I 
had played together charmingly all day in a sandy 
wilderness across the road; then came the evening 
with a great flash of colour and a heavenly sweetness 
in the air. Somehow my playmate had vanished, or 
is out of the story, as the sagas say, but I was sent 
into the village on an errand; and, taking a book of 
fairy-tales, went down alone through a fir- wood, read- 
ing as I walked. How often since then has it befallen 
me to be happy even so; but that was the first time: 
the shock of that pleasure I have never since forgot, 
and if my mind serves me to the last, I never shall; 
for it was then that I knew that I loved reading." 

This day must have been followed closely by the 
evening recorded in another essay. " Out of all the 
years of my life I can recall but one home-coming to 
compare with these (when he returned with some new 



INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD 41 

play for his toy- theatre) , and that was on the night 
when I brought back with me the Arabian Entertain- 
ments in the fat, old, double-columned volume with 
the prints. I was just well into the story of the 
Hunchback, I remember, when my clergyman grand- 
father (a man we counted pretty stiff) came in behind 
me. I grew blind with terror. But instead of order- 
ing the book away, he said he envied me. Ah, well 
he might." 

Although an only child and rendered more solitary 
by illness, Louis was not without companions, drawn 
(as often happens in early years) chiefly from the 
crowded ranks of his cousins, of whom he was nearly 
sure to find some at Colinton. By them he seems 
to have been treated, as Sir Sidney Colvin so happily 
says, "as something of a small sickly prince; " over 
them he cast the spell of his imagination in devising 
games, and they submitted to the force of his char- 
acter in accepting the rules which he saw fit to allot. 
"We children had naturally many plays together," 
he says of Colinton; "I usually insisted on the lead, 
and was invariably exhausted to death by the even- 
ing. I can still remember what a fury of play would 
descend upon me." Of his games he wrote: "I 
was the best player of hide and seek going; not a 
good runner, I was up to every shift and dodge, I 
could jink very well, I could crawl without any noise 
through leaves, I could hide under a carrot plant; 
it used to be my favourite boast that I always walked 
into the den." 

The country and the summer months gave him 
more companions, but the whole winter of 1856-57 



42 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

was spent in Heriot Row by the most brilliant of 
them all, the one who had most in common with 
Louis, and of all his kin was his closest friend in 
after-life, Robert Alan Mowbray Stevenson, the only 
son of his uncle Alan. He was the cousin of Child's 
Play, who ate his porridge " with sugar, and explained 
it to be a country continually buried under snow," 
while Louis took his " with milk, and explained it to 
be a country suffering gradual inundation." 

"We lived together in a purely visionary state," 
wrote Louis, "and were never tired of dressing up." 

It was during this winter and in this company that 
Louis, at the age of six, first entered the realms of 
gold described in "A Penny Plain and Twopence 
Coloured" {Memories and Portraits), the region of the 
toy- theatre and the "scenery of Skeltdom." The 
romance of purchasing the plays for himself came a 
little later, for during these months he could hardly 
leave the house; but now began the delight in the 
book and the dramatis personce. Years afterwards he 
described himself as "no melodramatist, but a Skelt- 
drunken boy; the man who went out to find the 
Eldorado of romantic comedy." Now also began the 
joys of illumination. Now he painted the characters 
"with crimson-lake (hark to the sound of it — crim- 
son-lake ! — the horns of elf-land are not richer on the 
ear) — with crimson-lake and Prussian blue a certain 
purple is to be compounded, which, for cloaks es- 
pecially, Titian could not equal." 

The last of his reminiscences of childish days that I 
have to give was written in Samoa, and describes, with 
all the resources of his perfected art, a state of mind 



INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD 43 

more subtle and tragic than any that we are accus- 
tomed to associate with the confines of infancy. 

"I was born within the walls of that dear city of 
Zeus, of which the lightest and (when he chooses) the 
tenderest singer of my generation sings so well. I 
was born likewise within the bounds of an earthly 
city, illustrious for her beauty, her tragic and pictu- 
resque associations, and for the credit of some of her 
brave sons. Writing as I do in a strange quarter of 
the world, and a late day of my age, I can still behold 
the profile of her towers and chimneys, and the long 
trail of her smoke against the sunset; I can still hear 
those strains of martial music that she goes to bed 
with, ending each day, like an act of an opera, to the 
notes of bugles; still recall, with a grateful effort of 
memory, any one of a thousand beautiful and spe- 
cious circumstances that pleased me, and that must 
have pleased anyone, in my half-remembered past. 
It is the beautiful that I thus actively recall; the 
august airs of the castle on its rock, nocturnal pas- 
sages of lights and trees, the sudden song of the black- 
bird in a suburban lane, rosy and dusky winter sun- 
sets, the uninhabited splendours of the early dawn, 
the building up of the city on a misty day, house 
above house, spire above spire, until it was received 
into a sky of softly glowing clouds, and seemed 
to pass on and upwards, by fresh grades and rises, 
city beyond city, a New Jerusalem, bodily scaling 
heaven. . . . 

" Memory supplies me, unsolicited, with a mass of 
other material, where there is nothing to call beauty, 
nothing to attract — often a great deal to disgust. 



44 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

There are trite street corners, commonplace, well-to- 
do houses, shabby suburban tan-fields, rainy beggarly 
slums, taken in at a gulp nigh forty years ago, and 
surviving to-day, complete sensations, concrete, poig- 
nant and essential to the genius of the place. From 
the melancholy of these remembrances I might sup- 
pose them to belong to the wild and bitterly unhappy 
days of my youth. But it is not so; they date, most 
of them, from early childhood; they were observed 
as I walked with my nurse, gaping on the universe, 
and striving vainly to piece together in words my in- 
articulate but profound impressions. I seem to have 
been born with a sentiment of something moving in 
things, of an infinite attraction and horror coupled." 



CHAPTER IV 
BOYHOOD— 1859-1867 

"Not all roads lead to Rome — only that you have begun 
to travel." — R. L. S., Aphorism. 

IT was not till 1859 that the boy's continuous 
schooling began, but to his formal education 
little or no importance attaches. The changes 
of his teachers were frequent, his absences from 
school innumerable, but both were due almost en- 
tirely to his health, and especially his susceptibility 
to colds. In the autumn of 1857 he had gone to Mr. 
Henderson's preparatory school in India Street, in 
the near neighbourhood of his home, as all his day- 
schools were. After a few weeks he had to give it 
up, and did not return there till October 1859. In 
186 1 he was transferred to the Edinburgh Academy, 
then, as now, the leading school of Edinburgh; there 
he spent a year and a half under D'Arcy Went- 
worth Thompson, author of Day Dreams of a School- 
master and other works, a teacher with views far in 
advance of his day, and subsequently for many years 
Professor of Greek in the Queen's College, Galway. 
Then for one term, his mother being abroad, he was 
sent to an English boarding-school at Spring Grove, 
Isleworth, in Middlesex. Finally, in 1864, he was 
again shifted — to a day-school kept by Robert Thom- 
son in Frederick Street, Edinburgh, which he attended 

45 



46 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

with more or less regularity until he went to the 
University in 1867. 

Besides his ordinary classes he had many tutors for 
longer or shorter periods, in Edinburgh and else- 
where, both when he was unable to leave the house, 
and also in order to supplement and help his school- 
work, a custom prevalent in Scotland. 

The teachers who gave him private lessons spoke 
of his intelligence in high terms, but in large classes 
he evaded the eye of the master and drew on him- 
self as little notice as possible. The Reverend Peter 
Rutherford, who taught him when he was at Mr. 
Henderson's, says: "He was without exception the 
most delightful boy I ever knew; full of fun, full of 
tender feeling; ready for his lessons, ready for a 
story, ready for fun;" and the master of the Burgh 
School of Peebles, who gave him lessons in 1864, 
found him the most intelligent and best informed boy 
in all his experience. A glowing interest in any sub- 
ject that took his fancy marked his earliest boyhood 
no less than his later years. But if he was bright 
and ready when he was interested, his attention was 
often short-lived, and to many of the subjects in his 
curriculum it never was given at all. In every lan- 
guage that he ever learned, the rules of its grammar 
remained unknown to him, however correctly he 
might use its idioms, and the spelling of his own 
tongue was dark to him to the very last. Latin, 
French, and mathematics seem to have been every- 
where the staple of his education. German he began 
with a private tutor in 1865 at Torquay, where he 
also received his only lessons in ordinary drawing. 



BOYHOOD 47 

The only prize that ever fell to him was at Mr. 
Henderson's school for his reading, which was com- 
mended, as he tells us, with the criticism: "Robert's 
voice, though not strong, is impressive." 

On the physical side of his education, dancing, 
despite the Covenanters, was persistently taught him 
with but scanty success: riding he learned chiefly 
in the summers of 1865 and 1866, though he first had 
a pony in 1856. In i860 and 1864 he was bathing 
with great enjoyment, and in the latter year he was 
also rowing on the Tweed. But of games proper 
there is little mention. From Spring Grove he wrote : 
" Yesterday I was playing at football. I have never 
played at cricket, so papa may comfort himself with 
that. I like football very much." Against this we 
have to set his confession that even at football "I 
knew at least one little boy who was mightily exer- 
cised about the presence of the ball, and had to spirit 
himself up, whenever he came to play, with an elab- 
orate story of enchantment, and take the missile as 
a sort of talisman bandied about in conflict between 
two Arabian nations." And at North Berwick he 
says: "You might golf if you wanted, but I seem to 
have been better employed." 

But if his health were unequal to constant school- 
work or severe exercise, it greatly improved after 
1863, and did not disable him from other boyish pur- 
suits. Already, in 1857, his mother had written: 
" Louis is getting very wild and like a boy." In 1864 
she records that "Whatever there was in him of 
' Puck' came very much to the front this summer. 
He was the leader of a number of boys who went 



48 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

about playing tricks on all the neighbours on Spring- 
hill, tapping on their windows after nightfall, " and all 
manner of wild freaks. The following year at Pee- 
bles he became a reckless rider. A girl companion 
of those days recollected the time " when my brother 
Bob, Louis, and I used to ride together. Bob had a 
black pony, and Louis called it 'Hell'; his own was 
brown, and was called ' Purgatory ' ; while mine was 
named 'Heaven.' Once the two boys galloped right 
through the Tweed on the way to Innerleithen, and 
I had to follow in fear of my life — poor 'Heaven' had 
the worst of it on that occasion." 

"In this year, too," says Louis himself, "at the 
ripe age of fourteen years, I bought a certain cudgel, 
got a friend to load it, and thenceforward walked the 
tame ways of the earth my own ideal, radiating pure 
romance — still but a puppet in the hand of Skelt." 

Nor was another element wanting. He speaks of 
Neidpath Castle in the close vicinity of Peebles, 
"bosomed in hills on a green promontory: Tweed at 
its base running through the gamut of a busy river, 
from the pouring shallow to the brown pool. In the 
days when I was thereabouts, that part of the earth 
was made a heaven to me by many things now lost, 
by boats and bathing, and the fascination of streams, 
and the delights of comradeship and those (surely the 
prettiest and simplest) of a boy and girl romance." 

Earlier experiences belonging to North Berwick 
and the autumn of 1862 are described in Memories 
and Portraits; these included fishing, bathing, wad- 
ing, and "crusoeing" — "a word that covers all ex- 
tempore eating in the open air: digging, perhaps, a 



BOYHOOD 49 

house under the margin of the links, kindling a fire 
of the sea-ware and cooking apples there." But the 
crown of all was the business of the lantern-bearers, 
a sport which was afterwards to Stevenson the type 
of all that was anti-realist and romantic. 

"Toward the end of September, when school-time 
was drawing near and the nights were already black, 
we would begin to sally from our respective villas, 
each equipped with a tin bull's-eye lantern. The 
thing was so well known that it' had worn a rut in 
the commerce of Great Britain; and the grocers, 
about the due time, began to garnish their windows 
with our particular brand of luminary. We wore 
them buckled to the waist upon a cricket belt, and 
over them, such was the rigour of the game, a but- 
toned top-coat. They smelled noisomely of blistered 
tin; they never burned aright, though they would 
always burn our fingers; their use was naught; the 
pleasure of them merely fanciful; and yet a boy with 
a bulPs-eye under his top-coat asked for nothing 
more. The fishermen used lanterns about their 
boats, and it was from them, I suppose, that we had 
got the hint; but theirs were not bull's-eyes, nor did 
we ever play at being fishermen. The police carried 
them at their belts, and we had plainly copied them 
in that; yet we did not pretend to be policemen. 
Burglars, indeed, we may have had some haunting 
thoughts of; and we certainly had an eye to past 
ages when lanterns were more common, to certain 
story-books in which we had found them to figure 
very largely. But take it for all in all, the pleasure 
of the thing was substantive; and to be a boy with 



5 o LIFE OF STEVENSON 

a bull's-eye under his top-coat was good enough 
for us. 

" When two of these asses met, there would be an 
anxious l Have you got your lantern ? ' and a gratified 
'Yes.' That was the shibboleth, and very needful, 
too; for, as it was the rule to keep our glory con- 
tained, none could recognise a lantern-bearer, unless 
(like a polecat) by the smell. Four or five would 
sometimes climb into the belly of a ten-man lugger, 
with nothing but the thwarts above them — for the 
cabin was usually locked — or choose out some hollow 
of the links where the wind might whistle overhead. 
There the coats would be unbuttoned and the bull's- 
eyes discovered; and in the chequering glimmer, un- 
der the huge windy hall of the night, and cheered by 
a rich steam of toasting tinware, these fortunate young 
gentlemen would crouch together in the cold sand 
of the links or on the scaly bilges of the fishing-boat, 
and delight themselves with inappropriate talk." 

Meanwhile, apart from his schools, the boy was 
gaining a wider knowledge of the world and having 
his first experiences of travel. In Scotland his long 
summer holidays were spent in the country much as 
before, until the Manse at Colinton began to " shield 
a stranger race." Now at some time he paid a visit 
to one of his uncles in the parish of Stow, on which, 
perhaps, he afterwards drew in Weir of Hermiston 
for his knowledge of the Lammermuirs. In 1857 he 
had crossed the Border with his parents for the first 
time, and visited the English Lakes. In 1862, the 
year of the second International Exhibition, his fath- 
er's health brought the family to London and the 



BOYHOOD 51 

South of England, and Louis saw not only the sights 
of the capital, but also Salisbury, Stonehenge, and 
the Isle of Wight. In July, the same cause took them 
all for a month to Homburg, which Louis liked very 
well, though he wearied sorely for the company of 
other boys. But this was only the beginning of his 
wanderings: in the winter of the same year Mrs. 
Stevenson was ordered to Mentone, and it was de- 
cided that her husband, her son, and a niece of Mr. 
Stevenson's should accompany her. Thither they 
went in January, and there they stayed two months. 
In March they made a tour through Genoa, Naples, 
Rome, Florence, Venice, and Innsbruck, returning 
home by the Rhine. His mother stayed behind in 
England, and Louis travelled from London by him- 
self for the first time, reaching Edinburgh on the 
29th of May. 

In the autumn he accompanied his father on a 
brief tour of lighthouse inspection in Fife, and on 
one day they visited seventeen lights. 

At Christmas 1863 Mrs. Stevenson was again at 
Mentone; there Louis joined her from his boarding- 
school and they remained in the Riviera till the be- 
ginning of May. The two next springs were passed 
by mother and son at Torquay, but after that it 
proved unnecessary for them to leave Scotland for 
any part of the winter. For the last three winters 
they were joined by Miss Jessie Warden, another 
niece of Mr. Stevenson, a clever and original girl, 
just grown to womanhood. In 1867, to their great 
grief, she died; she had filled an important part in 
their small circle, had been a delightful companion 



52 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

to Louis, and always held a bright place in his 
memory. 

The curious point about the foreign journeys is 
that they seem to have had very little manifest in- 
fluence upon Stevenson, and to have passed almost 
entirely out of his mind. 

His cousin Mrs. Napier, who was one of the party 
in 1863, recollected very distinctly how much he de- 
veloped at this period. " In some ways," she wrote, 
" he was more like a boy of sixteen. My uncle had a 
great belief (inherited from his father) in the educa- 
tional value of travel, and to this end and for the 
benefit of Louis he devoted his whole energies in the 
five months abroad. In the hotel at Nice he began 
to take Louis to the smoking-room with him; there 
my uncle was always surrounded by a group of eager 
and amused listeners — English, American, and Rus- 
sian — and every subject, political, artistic, and theo- 
logical, was discussed and argued. Uncle Tom's ge- 
nial manner found friends wherever he went, and the 
same sort of thing went on during the whole journey. 
Then in regard to what we saw, his keen admiration 
of art and architecture seemed to be shared by Louis; 
they would go into raptures over a cathedral, or an old 
archway, or a picture. I still remember Louis' eager 
interest in Pompeii and in the Catacombs at Rome; 
Venice, too, he specially enjoyed. In some of his 
books there are touches which his mother and I both 
recognised as due to places and persons seen in that 
long past journey. And in the Vailima prayers I 
seem to hear again an old melody that I know well — 
the echo of his father's words and daily devotions*** 



BOYHOOD 53 

Yet nowhere, so far as I know, did Louis allude to 
any of the more famous towns he then visited, as if 
they had come within his personal ken. Horatio 
Brown frequently discussed Venice with him at 
Davos, but without even discovering that he had ever 
set foot in Italy. Rome meant to Stevenson in after- 
life a great deal: the Roman Empire was far more 
of a reality to him than to many better scholars and 
many frequenters of the city of Rome. Yet Mr. 
Lloyd Osbourne tells me that the only reference he 
ever heard his step-father make to this time was 
on one occasion when he recalled with delight the 
picturesque appearance of their military escort in 
horsemen's cloaks riding through the Papal States. 
Five years later his correspondence proves him al- 
ready a keen observer, and yet half an hour with 
a guide-book would have furnished him with all 
the knowledge of Italian cities that he ever dis- 
played. 

But if his stores of experience were but little in- 
creased by these changes of scene, at least the boy 
was learning to exercise the savoir-faire which came 
very naturally to his disposition. At hotels he used 
to go to the table d'h6te alone, if necessary, and made 
friends freely with strangers. On his return from 
Homburg, he made great friends on the steamer with 
a Dutchman, who kept saying over to himself, "I 
loike this booy." His French master at Mentone on 
his second visit gave him no regular lessons, but 
merely talked to him in French, teaching him piquet 
and card tricks, introducing him to various French 
people, and taking him to convents and other places. 



54 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

So his mother remarks of his other masters at home, 
"I think they found it pleasanter to talk to him than 
to teach him." 

Of the other side of his character, of the solitary, 
dreamy, rather unhappy child, but little record sur- 
vives, or little evidence which can be assigned with 
certainty to these years. In one of his books he 
touches a chord which thrills with a personal emotion 
as he describes, "a malady most incident to only 
sons." " He flew his private signal and none heeded 
it; it seemed he was abroad in a world from which 
the very hope of intimacy was banished." It was 
a slightly older lad of whom he was thinking at the 
moment, but the malady begins at an early age, and 
tends unfortunately to be chronic. 

His reading progressed: for the date of his first 
introduction to Shakespeare there seems to be no 
evidence, and but for the strength of its impression it 
may have belonged to the earlier period. "I never 
supposed that a book was to command me until, one 
disastrous day of storm, the heaven full of turbulent 
vapours, the street full of the squalling of the gale, 
the windows resounding under bucketfuls of rain, my 
mother read aloud to me Macbeth. I cannot say I 
thought the experience agreeable; I far preferred the 
ditch-water stories that a child could dip and skip and 
doze over, stealing at times materials for play; it was 
something new and shocking to be thus ravished by 
a giant, and I shrank under the brutal grasp. But 
the spot in memory is still sensitive; nor do I ever 
read that tragedy but I hear the gale howling up the 
valley of the Leith." 



BOYHOOD 55 

His first acquaintance with Dumas began in 1863 
with the study of certain illustrated dessert plates in 
a hotel at Nice: his first enthusiasm for Scott's novels 
belongs with certainty to the time when he had begun 
to select his books for himself. 

"My father's library was a spot of some austerity; 
the proceedings of learned societies, some Latin di- 
vinity, cyclopaedias, physical science, and, above all, 
optics, held the chief place upon the shelves, and it 
was only in holes and corners that anything really 
legible existed as by accident. The Parent's Assis- 
tant, Rob Roy, Waverley, and Guy Mannering, the 
Voyages of Captain Woodes Rogers. Fuller's and 
Bunyan's Holy Wars, The Reflections of Robinson 
Crusoe, The Female Bluebeard, G. Sand's Mare au 
Diable (how came it in that grave assembly!), Ains- 
worth's Tower of London, and four old volumes of 
Punch — these were the chief exceptions. . . . Time 
and again I tried to read Rob Roy, with whom, of 
course, I was acquainted from the Tales of a Grand- 
father; time and again the early part with Rashleigh 
and (think of it!) the adorable Diana, choked me off; 
and I shall never forget the pleasure and surprise 
with which, lying on the floor one summer evening, I 
struck of a sudden into the first scene with Andrew 
Fairservice. 'The worthy Dr. Lightfoot' — c mys- 
trysted with a bogle' — 'a wheen green trash' — 
'Jenny, lass, I think I ha'e her'; from that day to 
this the phrases have been unforgotten. I read on, I 
need scarce say; I came to Glasgow, I bided tryst on 
Glasgow Bridge, I met Rob Roy and the Bailie in the 
Tolbooth, all with transporting pleasure; and then 



56 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

the clouds gathered once more about my path; and 
I dozed and skipped until I stumbled half-asleep into 
the Clachan of Aberfoyle, and the voices of Iverach 
and Galbraith recalled me to myself. With that 
scene and the defeat of Captain , Thornton the book 
concluded; Helen and her sons shocked even the 
little schoolboy of nine or ten with their unreality; 
I read no more, or I did not grasp what I was reading; 
and years elapsed before I consciously met Diana and 
her father among the hills, or saw Rashleigh dying 
in the chair. When I think of that novel and that 
evening, I am impatient with all others; they seem 
but shadows and imposters; they cannot satisfy the 
appetite which this awakened." 

What neither instruction nor travel could do for 
him was none the less coming about; the boy was 
educating himself; learning to write patiently, per- 
sistently, without brilliance or any apparent prospect 
of success. The History of Moses of 1856 had been 
followed the next year by a History of Joseph, after 
a brief interval devoted to a story " in slavish imita- 
tion of Mayne Reid." Two years later came an ac- 
count (still dictated) of his travels in Perth. Before 
thirteen he wrote a description of the inhabitants of 
Peebles in the style of the Book of Snobs. When he 
was fourteen he developed a facility for extemporising 
doggerel rhymes, and composed the libretto of an 
opera called The Baneful Potato, of which only the 
names of two characters survive — " Dig-him-up-o," 
the gardener, and "Seek-him-out-o," the policeman, 
and the first line of an aria sung by the heroine, " My 
own dear casement window." 



BOYHOOD 57 

At his last school and in his home circle he was 
always starting magazines. These were all in manu- 
script, generally illustrated with profusion of colour, 
and were sometimes circulated at a charge of one 
penny for reading. The Schoolboys' Magazine of 
1863, of which one number survives, contained four 
stories, and its readers must have been hard to satisfy 
if they did not have their fill of horrors. In the first 
tale, "The Adventures of Jan van Steen," the hero 
is left hidden in a boiler under which a fire is lit. 
The second is "A Ghost Story'' of robbers in a de- 
serted castle in "one of those barren places called 
plains in the north of Norway." A traveller finds a 
man, "half killed with several wounds," hidden under 
the floor, who dresses up as a ghost. The third story 
is called, by a curious anticipation, "The Wreckers." 
On the shore at North Berwick "were two men. 
The older and stronger of the two was a tall, ill-look- 
ing man with grizzled hair and a red nose. He was 
dressed in a tarnished, gold-laced, blue coat, a red 
waistcoat, and leggings. The other, who might have 
been a fisherman except for the fact that from each 
of the pockets of his pea-jacket there projected a 
pistol. He was a more villainous-looking fellow than 
the other. ' Dan,' said the first, ' what is that clinging 
to that mast?' { I think/ said the other, 'it is a 
sailor. You had better go and secure him.'" Last 
and not least terrible is " Creek Island, or Adventures 
in the South Seas." A line-of-battle ship called the 
Shark is wrecked in the Southern Ocean on its way 
to India, and two midshipmen fall into the hands of 
the Indians. " They had a council which pronounced 



58 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

death, but which death would we have to suffer? It 
was to be burned alive. . . . Next morning very 
early we had to get up and prepare to be burned alive. 
When we arrived at the place of execution, we shud- 
dered to think of being killed so soon. But I forgot 
to tell you that I had made love to [sic] beautiful girl 
even in one day, and from all I knew she loved me. 
The next thing they did was to build round us sticks 
and rubbish of all kinds till we could hardly see what 
they were doing. At last they finished. They then 
set fire to it, and after it had got hold well, they be- 
gan to dance, which is called a war-dance. (To be 
continued.) " 

"I forgot to tell you that I had made 7 ove to beautiful 
girl" "Was ever woman in this humour wooed?" 
At least the author remembered his own boyish taste, 
when heroines were excluded from Treasure Island. 
And yet this was the hand that at the last drew 
Barbara Grant and the two Kirstie Elliotts. 

In these days he had endless talks with Mr. H. B. 
Baildon, who seems to have been the first of his 
friends in whom he found a kindred interest in letters, 
and at one of these discussions he produced a drama 
which was apparently the earliest draft of Deacon 
Brodie. The story was familiar to him from child- 
hood, as a cabinet made by the Deacon himself 
formed part of the furniture of his nursery. His 
deepest and most lasting interest was, however, cen- 
tred in the Covenanters, of whom he had first learned 
from his nurse. He has told us how his attention 
was fixed on Hackston of Rathillet, who sat on 
horseback "with the cloak about his mouth," watch- 



BOYHOOD 59 

ing the assassination of Archbishop Sharp, in which 
he would take no part, lest it should be attributed to 
his private quarrel. Stevenson's first novel on the 
subject was attempted before he was fifteen, and 
"reams of paper," then and at a later date, were de- 
voted to it in vain. 

A similar fate attended a novel on the Pentland 
Rising — an episode well known to him from his in- 
fancy, as the Covenanters had spent the night before 
their defeat in the village of Colinton. 

This last composition, however, was not wholly 
without result. Though the novel was destroyed, 
his studies issued in a small green pamphlet, entitled 
The Pentland Rising: a Page of History, 1666, pub- 
lished anonymously, in 1866, by Andrew Elliot in 
Edinburgh. 

His aunt Jane Balfour wrote: "I was at Heriot 
Row in 1866 from the 29th October to 23rd No- 
vember, and Louis was busily altering the Pentland 
Rising then to please his father. He had made a 
story of it, and by so doing, had, in his father's opin- 
ion, spoiled it. It was printed not long after in a 
small edition, and Mr. Stevenson very soon bought 
all the copies in, as far as was possible." 

Thus the period closes somewhat surprisingly with 
Stevenson's first appearance as a printed author. 
The foundations were being well laid, but the struc- 
ture raised upon them was premature. The publica- 
tion was probably due to his father's approval of the 
subject-matter rather than to any belief in the literary 
ripeness of the style. At the same time, it was the 
best work that he had yet done, and the plentiful 



60 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

quotations from the pages of Wodrow and Kirkton, 
and of their opponent, Sir James Turner, are interest- 
ing in view of Stevenson's confession in Samoa, " My 
style is from the Covenanting writers." 



CHAPTER V 
STUDENT DAYS— 1867-73 

"Light foot, and tight foot, 
And green grass spread, 
Early in the morning, 
But hope is on ahead." 

R. L. S. 

THE time had come for the boy to leave school, 
and for his education to be shaped in some 
conformity with the profession supposed to 
lie before him. What this would be was never for a 
moment in doubt. Father and sons, the Stevensons 
were civil engineers, and to the grandsons naturally, 
in course of time, the business would be transferred. 
The family capacity for the work, though undeniable, 
was very elusive, consisting chiefly of a sort of instinct 
for dealing with the forces of nature, and seldom 
manifested clearly till called forth in actual practice. 
The latest recruit had certainly shown no conspicu- 
ous powers at any of his schools, but to such a cri- 
terion no one could have attached less value than his 
father. That he did possess the family gift was 
proved before he left the profession; but even had 
he never written his paper " On a New Form of In- 
termittent Light," no one could reasonably have con- 
demned on his behalf the choice of this career. 

Accordingly, the next three and a half years were 
devoted to his preparation for this employment. He 



62 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

spent the winter, and sometimes the summer, sessions 
at the University of Edinburgh, working for a Science 
degree, and saw something of the practical work of 
engineering during the other summer months. 

For the first two years he attended the Latin class, 
Greek being abandoned as hopeless after the first ses- 
sion; to Natural Philosophy he was constant, so far 
as his constancy in such matters ever went; Mathe- 
matics then replaced Greek, and Civil Engineering 
took the room of Latin. But all this was none of 
his real education. Although he remembered that 
"the spinning of a top is a case of Kinetic Stability" 
(one of the few facts recorded in a notebook still 
surviving), and that "Emphyteusis is not a disease, 
nor Stillicide a crime, " and would not willingly part 
with such scraps of science, he never "set the same 
store by them as by certain other odds and ends that 
he came by in the open street while he was playing 
truant." The last word recurs with every reference 
to his education. In fact, as far as the University 
was concerned, he "acted upon an extensive and 
highly rational system of truantry, which cost him a 
great deal of trouble to put in exercise;" and "no 
one ever played the truant with more deliberate care, 
and none ever had more certificates (of attendance) 
for less education." 

In the summer of 1868 Stevenson spent the month 
of July at Anstruther, and the six weeks following at 
Wick: records of which he has left in various letters 
written to his parents at the time, and in the essay 
on "Random Memories" entitled "The Education 
of an Engineer." In the first-named place he was 



STUDENT DAYS 63 

privileged to hear it said of him for the first time, 
" That's the man that's in charge." At Wick, besides 
his descent in a diving-suit ("one of the best things I 
got from my education as an engineer") an accident 
afforded him one of those opportunities for prompt 
action, of which his life contained all too few. It 
comes as the postscript to a short business letter to his 
father. 

"September 1868. 

" P. S. — I was forgetting my only news. A man 
fell off the staging this forenoon. I heard crying, and 
ran out to the end. By that time a rope had been 
lowered and the man was holding himself up by it, 
and of course wearing himself out. Some were away 
for a boat. 'Hold on, Angus,' they cried. 'I can 
not do it,' he said, with wonderful composure. I 
told them to lower a plank; everybody was too busy 
giving advice to listen to me; meantime the man was 
drowning. I was desperate, and could have knocked 
another dozen off. One fellow, Bain, a diver, lis- 
tened to me. We got the plank out and a rope 
round it; but they would not help us to lower it 
down. At last we got assistance, and were just about 
to lower it down, when some one cried, 'Hold your 
hand, lads! Here comes the boat.' And Angus 
was borne safely in. But my hand shook so, that I 
could not draw for some time after with the excite- 
ment— R. S." 

The following year he went with his father in the 
Pharos, the steamer of the Commissioners of North- 
ern Lights, to Shetland, a part of the same cruise as 



64 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

that on which his grandfather had attended Sir Wal- 
ter Scott. It was years afterwards that mentioning 
a boat-cloak, the use of which belonged chiefly to 
these days, he said: "The proudest moments of my 
life have been passed in the stern-sheets of a boat 
with that romantic garment about my shoulders. 
This, without prejudice to one glorious day when, 
standing upon some water-stairs at Lerwick, I sig- 
nalled with a pocket-handkerchief for a boat to come 
ashore for me. I was then aged fifteen or sixteen 
[eighteen]. Conceive my glory." 

In 1870, besides a week at Dunoon, to look after 
some work that was being done there, and one or two 
expeditions with the University Engineering class, he 
spent three weeks on the little island of Earraid, off 
Mull, the scene of David Balfour's shipwreck. It 
was commemorated later in Memories and Portraits, 
but at this date it was the headquarters for the build- 
ing of the deep-sea lighthouse of Dhu Heartach. 

All this was the attractive part of his work. " As 
a way of life," he wrote, "I wish to speak with sym- 
pathy of my education as an engineer. It takes a 
man into the open air; it keeps him hanging about 
harbour-sides, which is the richest form of idling; it 
carries him to wild islands; it gives him a taste of 
the genial dangers of the sea; it supplies him with 
dexterities to exercise; it makes demands upon his 
ingenuity; it will go far to cure him of any taste (if 
he ever had one) for the miserable life of cities." 

But even the open-air life had only a very slight 
hold upon him, as far as it was devoted to professional 
work. Nothing could be more convincing than the 



STUDENT DAYS 65 

little picture of his father and himself, given in the 
Family of Engineers, 

" My father would pass hours on the beach, brood- 
ing over the waves, counting them, noting their least 
deflection, noting when they broke. On Tweedside, 
or by Lyne and Manor, we have spent together whole 
afternoons; to me, at the time, extremely wearisome; 
to him, as I am now sorry to think, extremely morti- 
fying. The river was to me a pretty and various 
spectacle; I could not see — I could not be made to 
see — it otherwise. To my father it was a chequer- 
board of lively forces, which he traced from pool to 
shallow with minute appreciation and enduring in- 
terest. 'That bank was being undercut,' he might 
say. ' Why ? Suppose you were to put a groin out 
here, would not the filuni fluminis be cast abruptly 
off across the channel ? and where would it impinge 
upon the other shore ? and what would be the result ? 
Or suppose you were to blast that boulder, what 
would happen? Follow it — use the eyes that God 
has given you : can you not see that a great deal of 
land would be reclaimed upon this side?' It was 
to me like school in holidays; but to him, until I had 
worn him out with my invincible triviality, a delight." 

In Heriot Row he had now for his own use the two 
rooms on the top floor of his father's house, which had 
been his nurseries. The smaller chamber, to the east, 
was his bedroom, while the other held his books, and 
was used as his study as long as he lived in Edin- 
burgh. 

At the beginning of this period a change was made 
in the household arrangements, which was of material 



66 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

service both to his health and also to his subsequent 
work. In May 1867 his father took the lease of a 
house known as Swanston Cottage, lying in a nook at 
the foot of the Pentland Hills, at a distance of some 
five miles from Edinburgh and two and a half from 
the boy's paradise of Colinton. 

This was afterwards the home of the heroine of 
St. Ives, and in the Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh 
its situation and history were described. 

"Upon the main slope of the Pentlands ... a 
bouquet of old trees stands round a white farmhouse; 
and from a neighbouring dell you can see smoke ris- 
ing and leaves rustling in the breeze. Straight above, 
the hills climb a thousand feet into the air. The 
neighbourhood, about the time of lambs, is clamorous 
with the bleating of flocks; and you will be awakened 
in the grey of early summer mornings by the barking 
of a dog, or the voice of a shepherd shouting to the 
echoes. This, with the hamlet lying behind unseen, 
is Swanston. . . . Long ago, this sheltered field was 
purchased by the Edinburgh magistrates for the sake 
of the springs that rise or gather there. After they 
had built their water-house and laid their pipes, it 
occurred to them that the place was suitable for 
junketing. . . . The dell was turned into a garden; 
and on the knoll that shelters it from the plain and 
the sea winds, they built a cottage looking to the hills. 
They brought crockets and gargoyles from old St. 
Giles', which they were then restoring, and disposed 
them on the gables and over the door and about the 
garden; and the quarry which had supplied them 
with building material, they draped with clematis 



STUDENT DAYS 67 

and carpeted with beds of roses. In process of time 
the trees grew higher, and gave shade to the cottage, 
and the evergreens sprang up and turned the dell 
into a thicket." 

Here for the next fourteen years the family spent a 
large part of their summers in place of taking a fur- 
nished house at North Berwick or elsewhere. 

Hither at all seasons Louis would often retire alone 
or in the company of a friend; here he gained a knowl- 
edge of the Pentlands only to be acquired by living 
among them; here he saw something of the country 
folk, and enriched his vocabulary of Lallan; here 
made the acquaintance of John Todd the shepherd, 
and Robert Young the gardener, and the military 
beggarman who had a taste for Keats. This was to 
him ille ten arum angulus of Underwoods) on the hill 
above Swanston there lies the tiny pool, overhung by 
a rock, where he "loved to sit and make bad verses," 
and to this spot he asked his old nurse, four months 
before he finally left England, "some day to climb 
Halkerside for me (I am never likely to do it for my- 
self), and sprinkle some of the well water on the turf." 

Here one winter-tide he read Dumas again. "I 
would return in the early night from one of my patrols 
with the shepherd: a friendly face would meet me 
in the door, a friendly retriever scurry upstairs to 
fetch my slippers; and I would sit down with the 
Vicomte de Bragelonne for a long, silent, solitary, 
lamplit evening by the fire. ... I would rise from 
my book and pull the blind aside, and see the snow 
and the glittering hollies chequer a Scottish garden, 
and the winter moonlight brighten the white hills." 



68 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

Now he joined in various sports; at first he rode a 
good deal, and was even known to follow the hounds. 
At this time he skated, chiefly from Edinburgh, at 
Duddingston Loch. It was in these years that he 
was in Glenogil, in J. M. Barrie's country, and there 
caught as many as three dozen trout in one day, and 
forthwith forswore fishing. Now he made his first 
acquaintance with canoes, which at this time were 
introduced by Charles Baxter on the Firth of Forth. 
Sir Walter Simpson, the companion of the Inland 
Voyage, was another pioneer, and owned a large 
double canoe that often carried Stevenson, who had 
no boat of his own. His more experienced friends 
had no high opinion of his skill, but he occasionally 
joined them at Granton, and later at Queensferry, 
and spent many an afternoon in the fresh air of the 
Forth and the healthful employment of his paddle. , 

Conventional persons and conventional entertain- 
ments never had any attraction for him, and from 
general society in Edinburgh he was not long in with- 
drawing himself. There were exceptions of course; 
for several years after 187 1 he took part in the pri- 
vate theatricals at Professor Fleeming Jenkin's house: 
at first as prompter, and afterwards in some minor 
parts, for he never was proficient as an actor. But 
mostly he preferred to see his friends apart from 
general company, and as for his clothes, of which 
a great deal has been said — he dressed to please 
himself. 

He joined the University Conservative Club, an 
organisation for elections, and made his first speech 
at its dinner; he dined with his Academy class for 



STUDENT DAYS 69 

several years; and — more important than any of 
these — he was elected to the "Speculative Society " — 
that "Spec." of which the fame has gone abroad in 
the world largely by means of his writings. 

"It is a body of some antiquity, and has counted 
among its members Scott, Jeffrey, Horner, Benja- 
min Constant, Robert Emmet, and many a legal and 
local celebrity besides. By an accident, variously ex- 
plained, it has its rooms in the very buildings of the 
University of Edinburgh: a hall, Turkey-carpeted, 
hung with pictures, looking, when lighted up with 
fire and candle, like some goodly dining-room, a 
passage-like library, walled with books in their wire 
cages; and a corridor with a fireplace, benches, a 
table, many prints of famous members, and a mural 
tablet to the virtues of a former secretary. Here a 
member can warm himself and loaf and read; here, 
in defiance of Senatus-consults, he can smoke." 

The Society is limited to thirty ordinary members, 
who acquire honorary privileges at the end of four 
years. Meetings are held once a week from Novem- 
ber to March; first an essay is read and criticised, and 
then a motion is debated. The roll is called thrice 
on each of these evenings, and at each call every 
ordinary member is bound to be present; an elabo- 
rate system of procedure has grown up, fenced in 
with penalties and fines. Stevenson was elected a 
member on 16th February, 1869, and in the pro- 
ceedings he took an increasing interest. During his 
first complete session he attended six, during the 
next eight, and during the third session thirteen out 
of nineteen meetings. And in 1873 he wrote to one 



70 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

of his fellow-members: "O, I do think the Spec, is 
about the best thing in Edinburgh." 

The "Spec." was probably the first place where 
Stevenson came into contact and rivalry with con- 
temporaries who, being his equals, were not neces- 
sarily the friends of his own choice; and upon the 
members in general he seems to have made small 
impression. He was elected one of the five Presi- 
dents of the Society in 1872, but was at the bottom 
of the list and had only seven votes, whereas the first 
received eighteen, and the man next above him had 
thirteen supporters. In 1873 he was re-elected ap- 
parently without a contest; in his valedictory ad- 
dress, delivered in the same year, there is an amusing 
picture of the members, ending with a sketch of 
himself: — "Mr. Stevenson engaged in explaining to 
the other members that he is the cleverest person of 
his age and weight between this and California." 

But while the external course of his life seemed 
smooth, the deeper current had far more troubled a 
stream. For one thing, as we have seen, he was not 
interested in engineering, and all the time he could 
spare from it was given up to the pursuit which had 
taken firm possession of him. The art of writing was 
his one concern, and to learn this he was giving all 
his real self. 

There were, however, besides the misspending of 
his time and the misdirection of his labour, other 
difficulties that were far more grave. He had begun 
to work out for himself his own views of life: his 
religion and his ethics, his relations to society and his 
own place in the universe. He was following out the 



STUDENT DAYS 71 

needs of his mind and nature: strictly sincere with 
himself, he could never see things in their merely 
conventional aspect. He was "young in youth," 
and travelling at the fiery pace of his age and 
temperament; his senses were importunate, his in- 
tellect inquiring, and he must either find his own 
way, or, as he well might have done, lose it alto- 
gether. 

Of all Stevenson's difficulties those concerned with 
religion were the most important, if for no other rea- 
son than that they alone affected his relations with 
his father. The one was questioning dogmas and 
observances which the other regarded it as impious 
to examine; and no sacrifice was too great for the 
father, no duty too arduous, if it could only avert 
from his child the doom of the freethinker. On the 
other hand, sooner than be tied to the doctrines of 
Calvinism, the lad called himself an atheist — such is 
ever the youthful formula of independence. Of the 
precise nature of his difficulties at this time he has 
left no record. He was revolting generally against 
doctrines held with severity and intolerance, and 
struggling for that wider view and larger conception 
of life, which he afterwards found to be less incom- 
patible than he thought with the lessons of his earliest 
years. 

He speaks of the startling effect that the Gospel of 
St. Matthew produced on him, but this seems to have 
been chiefly upon the social side. He was never at 
any time prone to compromise, and the discrepancy 
between Christ's teaching and the practice of Chris- 
tian societies he was neither ready to explain away 



72 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

nor able to ignore. As in religion he designated him- 
self for the moment an atheist, so he seems in eco- 
nomics, if not in politics, to have become " a red-hot 
Socialist." The direction of his views was no doubt 
partly due to the " healthy democratic atmosphere " 
of the Scottish University system. 

"At an early age the Scottish lad begins his . . . 
experience of crowded class-rooms, of a gaunt quad- 
rangle, of a bell hourly booming over the traffic of the 
city to recall him from the public-house where he has 
been lunching, or the streets where he has been wan- 
dering fancy-free. His college life has little of re- 
straint, and nothing of necessary gentility. He will 
find no quiet clique of the exclusive, studious, and 
cultured; no rotten borough of the arts. All classes 
rub shoulders on the greasy benches. The raffish 
young gentleman in gloves must measure his scholar - 
ship with the plain, clever, clownish laddie from the 
parish school." 

Unfortunately the well-meant action of his parents 
added to his general unhappiness a touch of squalor. 
They were generosity itself; they provided for their 
son all that they thought a young man could possibly 
want. So long as he cared for such entertainments, 
they gave dinners and dances to his friends, whom 
they welcomed (if thought suitable) on all occasions 
to their house; for his health and education there 
was nothing they were not ready to do. One thing 
only was wanting to him, and that was liberty, or 
rather the means of using it. They knew how gener- 
ous he was by nature, probably they guessed how 
open-handed he was likely to be, and until he was 



STUDENT DAYS 73 

three-and-twenty they restricted him — as others of his 
friends also were restricted — to half-a-crown or, at the 
most, five shillings a week as pocket-money. The re- 
sult was that the lad went his own way, and fre- 
quented places which consorted with his means. This 
may have extended the future novelist's knowledge 
of man and woman and of the many aspects of hu- 
man life, but it was scarcely a successful policy in his 
father's eyes (had he but known) which placed his 
son's headquarters at a tobacconist's shop, and sent 
him to the Lothian Road and a succession of such 
public-houses as "The Green Elephant," "The 
Twinkling Eye," and "The Gay Japanee." 
Stevenson's own account of it ran thus: — 
" I was always kept poor in my youth, to my great 
indignation at the time, but since then with my com- 
plete approval. Twelve pounds a year was my allow- 
ance up to twenty-three (which was indeed far too 
little), and though I amplified it by a very consistent 
embezzlement from my mother, I never had enough 
to be lavish. My monthly pound was usually spent 
before the evening of the day on which I received it; 
as often as not, it was forestalled; and for the rest 
of the time I was in rare fortune if I had five shil- 
lings at once in my possession. Hence my acquaint- 
ance was of what would be called a very low order. 
Looking back upon it, I am surprised at the courage 
with which I first ventured alone into the societies in 
which I moved; I was the companion of seamen, 
chimney-sweeps, and thieves; my circle was being 
continually changed by the action of the police 
magistrate. I see now the little sanded kitchen, where 



74 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

Velvet Coat (for such was the name I went by) has 
spent days together, generally in silence and making 
sonnets in a penny version-book; and rough as the 
material may appear, I do not believe these days were 
among the least happy I have spent. I was dis- 
tinctly petted and respected; the women were most 
gentle and kind to me; I might have left all my money 
for a month, and they would have returned every 
farthing of it. Such indeed was my celebrity, that 
when the proprietor and his mistress came to inspect 
the establishment, I was invited to tea with them; 
and it is still a grisly thought to me, that I have since 
seen that mistress then gorgeous in velvet and gold 
chains, an old, toothless, ragged woman, with hardly 
voice enough to welcome me by my old name of 
Velvet Coat." 

The days were the days of green-sickness, and they 
were often miserable. Many a time he leaned over 
the great bridge which connects the New Town with 
the Old, and watched the trains smoking out from 
under him, and vanishing into the tunnel on a voyage 
to brighter skies. Often he haunted the station itself, 
envying the passengers; and again, "in the hot fits of 
youth," he went to the Calton burying-ground, "to 
be unhappy." "Poor soul," he says of himself, "I 
remember how much he was cast down at times, and 
how life (which had not yet begun) seemed already 
at an end, and hope quite dead, and misfortune and 
dishonour, like physical presences, dogging him as he 
went." 

Yet the days were the days of youth, and often 
they were days of happiness. The clouds rolled away 




Robert Louis Stevenson 
aet. 20 



STUDENT DAYS 75 

in their season; most of the troubles were subjective, 
and though they were acutely felt, yet their ultimate 
solution was certain. 

The one difficulty most immediately affecting his 
outer life — the pursuit of engineering — was, however, 
among the first to be solved. On April 8th, 187 1, 
Louis told his father of his extreme disinclination for 
the work, and asked to be allowed to follow literature. 
It must have come as a heavy disappointment to 
Thomas Stevenson, who, as we have seen, was de- 
voted to the practice of his calling. Moreover, only 
twelve days previously Louis had read before the 
Royal Scottish Society of Arts his first and only con- 
tribution to the literature of his profession, a paper 
on a New Form of Intermittent Light, which was 
afterwards judged "well worthy of the favourable 
consideration of the Society, and highly creditable to 
so young an author." The father felt the blow, but 
he must to some extent have been prepared for it by 
his son's entire lack of interest in the solution of 
problems which to him were the most entrancing in 
the world. He seems to have met the request with 
calm; his wife's diary records that he was "wonder- 
fully resigned"; and the matter was compromised 
without difficulty or delay. Engineering was to be 
given up forthwith, but lest Louis should find him- 
self with no other profession than that of "failed 
author," he was to read Law and to be called to 
the Scottish Bar. If he chose to practise, he would 
have his profession; his necessary legal and histori- 
cal studies would add more or less to his general 
culture, and he would be able during his preparation 



76 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

to carry on the literary training that was already 
occupying so large a portion of his time. 

The general alleviation of his position was more 
gradual, but of this he has left an account, the frag- 
ment of a larger scheme of biography written in San 
Francisco in the beginning of 1880. 

"I had a happy afternoon scrambling with Bob 
upon the banks of the Water of Leith above Slate- 
ford. And so I may leave this part of my life and 
take it up in another direction. At last I am now 
done with morbidity and can wash my hands. 

"BOOK III. — FROM JEST TO EARNEST 

"I date my new departure from three circum- 
stances: natural growth, the coming of friends, and 
the study of Walt Whitman. The order or degree 
of their effectiveness I shall not seek to distinguish. 
But I shall first say something of my friends. 

"My cousin Bob, 1 who had now, after a long ab- 
sence, returned to Edinburgh, is the man likest and 
most unlike to me that I have ever met. Our likeness 
was one of tastes and passions, and, for many years at 
least, it amounted in these particulars to an identity. 
He had the most indefatigable, feverish mind I have 
ever known; he had acquired a smattering of almost 

1 Robert Alan Mowbray Stevenson (1847-1900), son of Alan 
Stevenson (see p. 42), born in Edinburgh, educated at Windermere 
College and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. He studied paint- 
ing chiefly at Antwerp and in France, but became an art critic 
about 1885, and was (1885-9) Professor of Fine Arts at University 
College, Liverpool. But with pen or brush he never did full 
justice to his remarkable personality and powers of expression. 
York Powell writing in the Saturday Review in 1900 said: "We 
know what the joy was of the 'Mermaid' since we have known 
him." 



STUDENT DAYS 77 

every knowledge and art; he would surprise you by 
his playing, his painting, his writing, his criticism, his 
knowledge of philosophy, and above all, by a sort of 
vague, disconnected and totally inexplicable erudi- 
tion. What was specially his, and genuine, was his 
faculty for turning over a subject in a conversation. 
There was an insane lucidity in his conclusions; a 
singular, humorous eloquence in his language, and a 
power of method, bringing the whole of life into the 
focus of the subject under hand; none of which I 
have ever heard equalled or even approached by any 
other talker. I am sure that he and I together have, 
in a brief, conspectory manner, turned over the stuff 
of a year's reading in one half-hour of talk. He was 
the most valuable man to talk to, above all in his 
younger days ; for he twisted like a serpent, changed 
like the patterns in a kaleidoscope, transmigrated (it 
is the only word) from one point of view to another 
with a swiftness and completeness that left a stupid 
and merely logical mind panting in the rear; and so, 
in an incredibly brief space of time, helped you to 
view a question upon every side. In sheer trench- 
ancy of mind, I have ever been his humble and dis- 
tant follower. The multiplicity and swiftness of his 
apprehensions, if they do not bewilder, at least para- 
lyse his mind. He is utterly without measure. He 
will spend a week in regulating the expenses of an im- 
aginary navy; and then in ten minutes crush a subtle 
fallacy or create a new vein of criticism. We have 
perhaps only one moral quality in common : a desire 
to do justice to those with whom we are at enmity. 
"The next friend who came to me (I take them in 



78 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

the order of time) was, I think, Charles Baxter. I 
cannot characterise a personality so unusual in the 
little space that I can here afford. I have never 
known one of so mingled a strain. As a companion, 
when in spirits, he stands without an equal in my 
experience. He is the only man I ever heard of who 
could give and take in conversation with the wit and 
polish of style that we find in Congreve's comedies. 
He is likewise the only person I ever knew who could 
advise, or, to explain more perfectly my meaning, 
who could both make helpful suggestions and at the 
same time hold his tongue when he had none to offer. 

"The next was James Walter Ferrier. It is only 
now when I come to describe them that I perceive 
how strange a crew were my associates; but Ferrier's 
strangeness was of a tragic character. The grandson 
of old Wilson, the son of Ferrier the metaphysician, 
he was gifted with very considerable abilities; he was 
by nature the most complete and gentle gentleman 
(I must risk the pleonasm) I have known. 

["I never knew any man so superior to himself. 
The best of him only came as a vision, like Corsica 
from the Corniche. He never gave his measure 
either morally or intellectually. The curse was on 
him. Even his friends did not know him but by 
fits. I have passed hours with him when he was so 
wise, good, and sweet, that I never knew the like of 
it in any other.] 

"The fourth of these friends was Sir Walter Simp- 
son, son of Sir James who gave chloroform to the 
world. He was, I think, the eldest of my associates; 
yet he must have been of a more deliberate growth, 



STUDENT DAYS 79 

for when we encountered, I believe we were about 
equal in intellectual development. His was a slow 
fighting mind. You would see him, at times, wrestle 
for a minute at a time with a refractory jest, and 
perhaps fail to throw it at the end. I think his 
special character was a profound shyness, a shyness 
which was not so much exhibited in society as it 
ruled in his own dealings with himself. I have said 
his mind was slow, and in this he was an opposite 
and perhaps an antidote to Bob. I have known him 
battle a question sometimes with himself, sometimes 
with me, month after month for years; he had an 
honest stubbornness in thinking, and would neither 
let himself be beat nor cry victory. 

"The mere return of Bob changed at once and for 
ever the course of my life; I can give you an idea 
of my relief only by saying that I was at last able to 
breathe. The miserable isolation in which I had 
languished was no more in season, and I began to be 
happy. To have no one to whom you can speak your 
thoughts is but a slight trial; for a month or two at 
a time, I can support it almost without regret; but 
to be young, to be daily making fresh discoveries and 
fabricating new theories of life, to be full of flimsy, 
whimsical, overpowering humours, that seem to leave 
you no alternative but to confide them or to die, and 
not only not to have, but never to have had a confi- 
dant, is an astounding misery. I now understand it 
best by recognising my delight when that period was 
ended. I thought I minded for nothing when I had 
found my Faithful; my heart was like a bird's; I 



80 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

was done with the sullens for good; there was an end 
of green-sickness for my life as soon as I had got a 
friend to laugh with. Laughter was at that time our 
principal affair, and I doubt if we could have had a 
better. . . . 

"As Bob said, we did nothing obvious; the least 
joke was spiced to us by being imbedded in moun- 
tains of monotony. " 

Here the manuscript breaks off. Some notes on an 
earlier page enable us to learn in what direction it 
might have been continued. "Whitman: humanity: 
L. J. R.: love of mankind: sense of inequality: jus- 
tification of art: decline of religion: I take to the 
New Testament: change startling: growing desire for 
truth: Spencer: should have done better with the 
New Test." 

Thus the coming of happiness was due partly to 
his friends and partly to his reading. To the list of 
the former there is still an addition to be made — the 
name of Fleeming Jenkin. It was in 1868 that Jen- 
kin came to Edinburgh as Professor of Engineering, 
and it was first in the character of a truant that Ste- 
venson came under his notice. The professor was 
fifteen years older than his pupil — a difference in age 
which is often difficult to surmount. But besides his 
boundless energy and vitality, there was about Jen- 
kin a perpetual boyishness, which showed itself not 
least in this, that his development continued to the 
end of his life. His delight in all that was high- 
minded and heroic, his fiery enthusiasm, his extraor- 
dinary readiness and spirit, were just the qualities 
to win and to stimulate the younger man. Moreover, 



STUDENT DAYS 81 

at the time that Stevenson fell under his influence, the 
detachment and independence of Jenkin's religious 
views rendered that influence of far greater weight 
than if he had been content to yield a lifeless assent 
to established observances and conventional creeds. 
Stevenson was in revolt, or meditating an outbreak. 
Here was a man, ready to question everything, exer- 
cising a clear-sighted judgment, and yet full of ear- 
nestness and piety, who "saw life very simple," who 
did not love refinements, but was "a friend to much 
conformity in unessentials." And about Jenkin 
there were these further points which distinguished 
him from Stevenson's other friends, and gave him a 
great advantage. He was the only one who had 
already fought the battle of life, and not only was 
victorious but knew how to carry his success. More- 
over, he was the first of Stevenson's friends who was 
already married. Perhaps the most charming pas- 
sages in the Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin are those 
which suggest rather than describe the infinite ten- 
derness and romance which marriage brought into 
his life and made his house all it was to those who 
frequented it. Mrs. Jenkin, writing in 1895, says 
that her husband loved Louis best of all his friends, 
and Stevenson, when he came to write Jenkin's biog- 
raphy, records what mingled pain and pleasure it was 
"to dig into the past of a dead friend, and find him, 
at every spadeful, shine brighter." 

Of his first introduction to Mrs. Jenkin, she has 
herself given an account. Late on a winter afternoon 
in 1868 she paid her first visit to 17 Heriot Row, and 
there found Mrs. Stevenson sitting by the firelight, 



82 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

apparently alone. They began to talk, when " sud- 
denly, from out of a dark corner beyond the fireplace, 
came a voice, peculiar, vibrating; a boy's voice, I 
thought at first. 'Oh!' said Mrs. Stevenson, 'I for- 
got that my son was in the room. Let me introduce 
him to you.' The voice went on: I listened in per- 
plexity and amazement. Who was this son who 
talked as Charles Lamb wrote? this young Heine 
with the Scottish accent? I stayed long, and when I 
came away the unseen converser came down with me 
to the front-door to let me out. As he opened it, the 
light of the gas-lamp outside (' For we are very lucky, 
with a lamp before the door, ' he sings) fell on him, 
and I saw a slender, brown, long-haired lad, with 
great dark eyes, a brilliant smile, and a gentle, dep- 
recating bend of the head. 'A boy of sixteen,' I 
said to myself. But he was eighteen, looking then, as 
he always did, younger than his age. I asked him to 
come and see us. He said, ' Shall I come to-morrow ? ' 
I said ' Yes,' and ran home. As I sat down to dinner 
I announced, ' I have made the acquaintance of a 
poet!' He came on the morrow, and from that day 
forward we saw him constantly. From that day for- 
ward too, our affection and our admiration for him, 
and our delight in his company, grew." 

Thus much of his friends and their influence. 
There was also the other continual and stimulating 
influence of books, and though Stevenson was never 
a scholar in the strict and more arid sense, few men 
ever brought so great an enthusiasm to the studies 
of their choice. His ardour was now at its height. 
Twenty years later he wrote: "I have really enjoyed 



STUDENT DAYS 83 

this book as I — almost as I — used to enjoy books 
when I was going twenty — twenty- three; and these 
are the years for reading. 

"Books were the proper remedy: books of vivid 
human import, forcing upon the minds of young men 
the issues, pleasures, busyness, importance, and im- 
mediacy of that life in which they stand; books of 
smiling or heroic temper, to excite or to console; 
books of a large design, shadowing the complexity 
of that game of consequences to which we all sit 
down, the hanger-back not least." 

Besides his books at home, he had always access to 
the Advocates' Library, the great public library of 
Edinburgh, which is entitled to receive a copy of 
everything published in the kingdom. But for the 
present the question is of those works with which a 
man lives, which for the time become an intimate 
part of himself, and closer than any friend. Such 
were to Stevenson the three already mentioned, the 
New Testament, Walt Whitman, and Herbert Spen- 
cer. Of the first he says but little, and of that I have 
already spoken: to Whitman he has done a measure 
of justice in one of the Familiar Studies, and also in 
a paper on " Books which have influenced me." In 
the latter, too, Mr. Herbert Spencer also receives his 
meed of gratitude, and to him succeed Shakespeare, 
Dumas, Bunyan, Montaigne, and many others in rapid 
sequence, until the writer was manifestly overwhelmed 
in returning thanks to the whole world of books 
which brought him so much wisdom and happiness. 

But learning to write — there was the business of 
life. Although the description of the method by 



84 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

which he taught himself this most difficult of arts has 
been quoted again and again, and has long ago be- 
come classical, I have no alternative and no desire 
but to give it in this place. The process described 
had long begun, when this period opened, as it 
continued after its close; but to these years it 
chiefly refers — a space of protracted and laborious 
application without encouragement or immediate 
reward. 

" All through my boyhood and youth I was known 
and pointed out for the pattern of an idler; and yet 
I was always busy on my own private end, which was 
to learn to write. I kept always two books in my 
pocket, one to read, one to write in. As I walked, 
my mind was busy fitting what I saw with appro- 
priate words; when I sat by the roadside, I would 
either read, or a pencil and a penny version-book 
would be in my hand, to note down the features of 
the scene or commemorate some halting stanzas. 
Thus I lived with words. 

"And what I thus wrote was for no ulterior use; 
it was written consciously for practice. It was not so 
much that I wished to be an author (though I wished 
that too) as that I had vowed that I would learn to 
write. That was a proficiency that tempted me; and 
I practised to acquire it, as men learn to whittle, in 
a wager with myself. Description was the principal 
field of my exercise; for to anyone with senses there 
is always something worth describing, and town 
and country are but one continuous subject. But I 
worked in other ways also; often accompanied my 
walks with dramatic dialogues, in which I played 



STUDENT DAYS Z$ 

many parts; and often exercised myself in writing 
down conversations from memory. 

"Whenever I read a book or a passage that particu- 
larly pleased me, in which a thing was said or an 
effect rendered with propriety, in which there was 
either some conspicious force or some happy distinc- 
tion in the style, I must sit down at once and set 
myself to ape that quality. I was unsuccessful, and I 
knew it; and tried again, and was again unsuccessful, 
and always unsuccessful; but at least in these vain 
bouts I got some practice in rhythm, in harmony, in 
construction and the co-ordination of parts. 

"I have thus played the sedulous ape to Hazlitt, to 
Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Sir Thomas Browne, to 
Defoe, to Hawthorne, to Montaigne, to Baudelaire 
and to Obermann. I remember one of these mon- 
key-tricks, which was called ' The Vanity of Morals'; 
it was to have had a second part 'The Vanity of 
Knowledge'; but the second part was never at- 
tempted, and the first part was written (which is my 
reason for recalling it, ghost-like, from its ashes) no 
less than three times: first in the manner of Hazlitt, 
second in the manner of Ruskin, who had cast on me 
a passing spell, and third, in a laborious pasticcio of 
Sir Thomas Browne. So with my other works : Cain, 
an epic, was (save the mark!) an imitation of Sor- 
dello: Robin Hood, a tale in verse, took an eclectic 
middle course among the fields of Keats, Chaucer, 
and Morris: in Monmouth, a tragedy, I reclined on 
the bosom of Mr. Swinburne; in my innumerable 
gouty-footed lyrics, I followed many masters; in the 
first draft of The King's Pardon, a tragedy, I was on 



86 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

the trail of no less a man than John Webster; in the 
second draft of the same [fiece, with staggering ver- 
satility, I had shifted my allegiance to Congreve, and 
of course conceived my fable in a less serious vein — 
for it was not Congreve's verse, it was his exquisite 
prose, that I admired and sought to copy. . . . 

"That, like it or not, is the way to learn to write; 
whether I have profited or not, that is the way. It 
was so Keats learned, and there was never a finer 
temperament for literature than Keats. . . . 

"It is the great point of these imitations that there 
still shines, beyond the student's reach, his inimitable 
model. I must have had some disposition to learn; 
for I clear-sightedly condemned my own perform- 
ances. I liked doing them indeed; but when they 
were done, I could see they were rubbish. In conse- 
quence, I very rarely showed them even to my friends; 
and such friends as I chose to be my confidants I 
must have chosen well, for they had the friendliness 
to be quite plain with me. 'Padding/ said one. 
Another wrote: £ I cannot understand why you do 
lyrics so badly.' No more could I! Thrice I put 
myself in the way of a more authoritative rebuff, by 
sending a paper to a magazine. These were returned, 
and I was not surprised or even pained. If they had 
not been looked at, as (like all amateurs) I suspected 
was the case, there was no good in repeating the ex- 
periment; if they had been looked at — well then I 
had not yet learned to write, and I must keep on 
learning and living." 

Thus the secret of learning was — for the right man 

>nly the secret of taking pains: and yet in the 



STUDENT DAYS 87 

history of his endeavours we find, where we should 
least expect it, a hereditary trait. It seems as absurd 
to couple with indolence the name of the indefatiga- 
ble writer, as it was for him to bring his grandfather 
into a similar connection : but it is from himself that 
we hear of this failing, although we know not to 
which year it must be referred. 

"I remember a time when I was very idle, and 
lived and profited by that humour. I have no idea 
why I ceased to be so, yet I scarce believe I have the 
power to return to it; it is a change of age. I made 
consciously a thousand little efforts, but the deter- 
mination from which these arose came to me while I 
slept and in the way of growth. I have had a thou- 
sand skirmishes to keep myself at work upon particu- 
lar mornings, and sometimes the affair was hot; but 
of that great change of campaign, which decided all 
this part of my life and turned me from one whose 
business was to shirk into one whose business was to 
strive and persevere, it seems to me as though all that 
had been done by some one else. The life of Goethe 
affected me; so did that of Balzac; and some very 
noble remarks by the latter in a pretty bad book, the 
Cousine Bette. I dare say I could trace some other 
influences in the change. All I mean is, I was never 
conscious of a struggle, nor registered a vow, nor 
seemingly had anything personally to do with the 
matter. I came about like a well-handled ship. 
There stood at the wheel that unknown steersman 
whom we call God." 

As to the products of his labours, editors, as he has 
told us, would have nothing to say to them. So he 



88 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

became an editor himself. Magazines had risen and 
fallen wherever the boy had gone; but none of his 
serials had yet attained the distinction of type. The 
idea of the Edinburgh University Magazine was 
started in the rooms of the "Spec." by four of the 
members of that society, of which Stevenson was the 
youngest and least esteemed; and the history of its 
rise and fall (for print did not save it from the fate 
of its manuscript predecessors) may be read in Mem- 
ories and Portraits. 

"The magazine appeared in a yellow cover, which 
was the best part of it, for at least it was unassuming; 
... it ran four months in undisturbed obscurity, and 
died without a gasp. The first number was edited 
by all four of us, with prodigious bustle; the second 
fell principally into the hands of Ferrier and me; the 
third I edited alone; and it has long been a solemn 
question who it was that edited the fourth. . . . 

"It was no news to me, but only the wholesome 
confirmation of my judgment, when the magazine 
struggled into half-birth, and instantly sickened and 
subsided into night. ... I cleared the decks after 
this lost engagement; had the necessary interview 
with my father, which passed off not amiss; paid 
over my share of expense; . . . and then, reviewing 
the whole episode, I told myself that the time was 
not yet ripe, nor the man ready; and to work again 
I went with my penny version-books, having fallen 
back in one day from the printed author to the man- 
uscript student." 

In 187 1 he wrote the paper on "A New Form of 
Intermittent Light for Lighthouses," which was 



STUDENT DAYS 89 

highly praised, and received a ^3 medal from the 
Royal Scottish Society of Arts, and in May 1873 his 
paper "On the Thermal Influence of Forests" was 
communicated to the Royal Society of Edinburgh by 
his father, and duly appeared in the Proceedings of 
that Society. 

Meanwhile their author was reading for the Bar, 
or at any rate attending some of the necessary lectures 
in Civil Law, Public Law, and Political Economy. 
In the second of these subjects he was even third in 
the class and received honourable mention, and from 
Professor Hodgson he gained a certificate for essays. 

During the years 1872 and 1873 he spent some 
months in the office of Messrs. Skene and Peacock, 
Writers to the Signet, in order to learn conveyancing. 
The senior partner of this firm was the well-known 
historian and antiquary, Mr. W. F. Skene, the author 
of Celtic Scotland, but it seems that he was hardly at 
all brought into connection with his pupil, and that, 
in later years, either learned with much regret what 
they might have found in one another's society. 

In November 1872 Stevenson, having no degree or 
qualification for exemption, passed the preliminary 
examination for the Scottish Bar; the circumstances 
are worth mention only for the light they throw on 
his character and his education. French was one of 
the subjects offered, and only the day before the 
examination he discovered that questions would be 
set him in the grammar of that language. He forth- 
with procured a book and realised that here was a 
body of knowledge, the very existence of which had 
been unknown to him. It was manifestly useless to 



90 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

attempt to get it up in four-and-twenty hours, so 
he went in, relying on his practical acquaintance 
with the idiom. His ignorance was exposed, but his 
knowledge and his plausibility induced and enabled 
the examiner "to find a form of words," and his 
French was accepted as adequate. Another sub- 
ject was Ethical and Metaphysical Philosophy, and 
Hamilton or Mackintosh (it is undesirable to be too 
precise) was the book prescribed. I give Stevenson's 
own account of what took place, as I have heard him 
tell the story. "The examiner asked me a ques- 
tion, and I had to say to him, 'I beg your pardon, 
but I do not understand your phraseology.' ' It's the 
text-book,' he said. 'Yes; but you couldn't possi- 
bly expect me to read so poor a book as that.' He 
laughed like a hunchback, and then put the ques- 
tion in another form; I had been reading Maine, 
and answered him by the historical method. They 
were probably the most curious answers ever given 
in the subject; I don't know what he thought of 
them, but they got me through." 

In 1872 he proposed to take a summer session at 
some German university with Sir Walter Simpson, 
who was also studying Law. But his mother grew so 
nervous that he gave up the scheme, and in place 
of it the friends spent two or three weeks together 
during the first part of August, chiefly in lodgings in 
Frankfurt. His parents joined him at Baden-Baden, 
and he then went for a short walking tour in the 
Black Forest. 

But Stevenson as he was in the later years of this 
period may best be seen in the curiously diverse en- 



STUDENT DAYS 91 

tries of a short diary kept on a folio sheet of paper 
upon his first entrance to the lawyers* office. 

"Thursday, May gth (1872). — Went to office for 
first time. Had to pass an old sailor and an idiot 
boy, who tried both to join company with me, lest 
I should be late for office. A fine sunny, breezy 
morning, walking in. A small boy (about ten) call- 
ing out c Flory' to a dog was very pretty. There was 
a quaint little tremolo in his voice that gave it a 
longing, that was both laughable and touching. All 
the rest of the way in, his voice rang in my memory 
and made me very happy. 

"Sunday, May 12th. — My father and I walked 
over to Glencorse to church. A fat, ruddy farm 
wench showed us the way; for the church, although 
on the top of a hill, is so buried among the tree-tops 
that one does not see it till one trips against the plate. 
It is a quaint old building, and the minister, Mr. Tor- 
rance (his father and grandfather were here before 
him), is still more quaint and striking. He is about 
eighty; and he lamed himself last summer dancing 
a reel at a wedding. He wears black thread gloves; 
and the whole manner of the man in the pulpit 
breathes of last century. 

"Monday, May 13th. — In all day at the office. In 

the evening dined with Bob. Met X , who was 

quite drunk and spent nigh an hour in describing his 
wife's last hours — an infliction which he hired us 
to support with sherry ad lib. Splendid moonlight 
night. Bob walked out to Fairmilehead with me. 
We were in a state of mind that only comes too sel- 
dom in a lifetime. We danced and sang the whole 



92 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

way up the long hill, without sensible fatigue. I 
think there was no actual conversation — at least none 
has remained in my memory; I recollect nothing 
but 'profuse bursts of unpremeditated song.' Such 
a night was worth gold untold. Ave pia testa! 

"Friday, July $ih. — A very hot sunny day. The 
Princes Street Gardens were full of girls and idle 
men, steeping themselves in sunshine. A boy lay on 
the grass under a clump of gigantic hemlocks in 
flower, that looked quite tropical and gave the whole 
garden a southern smack that was intensely charming 
in my eyes. He was more ragged than one could 
conceive possible. It occurred to me that I might 
here play le dieu des pauvres gens, and repeat for him 
that pleasure that I so often try to acquire artificially 
for myself by hiding money in odd corners and hope- 
lessly trying to forget where I have laid it; so I 
slipped a halfpenny into his ragged waistcoat pocket. 
One might write whole essays about his delight at 
finding it." 



CHAPTER VI 
LIFE AT FIVE-AND-TWENTY— 1873-76 

"Since I am sworn to live my life 
And not to keep an easy heart, 
Some men may sit and drink apart, 
I bear a banner in the strife. 

Some can take quiet thought to wife, 
I am all day at tierce and carte, 
Since I am sworn to live my life 
And not to keep an easy heart. 

I follow gaily to the fife, 
Leave Wisdom bowed above a chart, 
And Prudence brawling in the mart, 
And dare Misfortune to the knife, 
Since I am sworn to live my life." 

R. L. S. 

"I clung hard to that entrancing age, but with the best 
will, no man can be twenty-five for ever." 

Preface to Virginibus Puerisque. 

EIGHTEEN hundred and seventy-three was a 
decisive year: for although it left Stevenson, 
as it found him, a law student with literary 
tastes, it yet marked a definite change in his life. It 
saw the religious question come to a crisis, and by so 
much, therefore, nearer to a settlement; it brought 
him new friends with both interest and influence in 
the career for which he was longing; and it fore- 
shadowed the beginning of that career in the ac- 

93 



94 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

ceptance and publication of the first of his maga- 
zine articles. 

The most important event of the year for him 
sounds in itself one of the most trivial that can well 
be imagined — a visit to a country parsonage in 
Suffolk. A granddaughter of the old minister of 
Colinton had several years before married the Rev. 
Churchill Babington, Disney Professor of Archaeology 
in the University of Cambridge, and formerly a Fel- 
low of St. John's College, who had taken the college 
living of Cockfield, a few miles from Bury St. Ed- 
munds. Here Stevenson had paid a visit in 1870, one 
of those excursions into England of which he speaks 
in the essay on "The Foreigner at Home," and from 
which he received " so vivid an impression of foreign 
travel and strange lands and manners." These sen- 
sations were now renewed and deepened, but the 
later visit was to have other and more lasting effects : 
Stevenson now met for the first time two fellow- 
guests, whose friendship became at once an impor- 
tant element in his life, affecting his development, 
changing his horizon, and opening for him a direct 
outlook into the world of letters in which he was to 
be hereafter so brilliant a figure. The first of these, 
a connection by marriage and intimate friend of his 
hostess, was the Mrs. SitwelPto whom those letters 
were addressed, which throw so much light on the 
inner feelings and thoughts of the ensuing period of 
Stevenson's life. The second was Sir Sidney Colvin, 
who then and there began that friendship which was 
so immediately helpful, which survived all shocks of 

1 Since Lady Colvin. 



LIFE AT FIVE-AND-TWENTY 95 

time and change, which separation by half the world 
seemed only to render more close and assiduous, and 
which has its monument in the Vailima Letters, in the 
volumes of Stevenson's correspondence, and in the 
Edinburgh Edition of his works. Mr. Colvin was 
then still resident at Cambridge as a Fellow of Trinity 
College, and had that same year been elected Slade 
Professor of Fine Art in the University. Although 
Stevenson's elder by only a few years, he had already 
established for himself a reputation as a critic in 
literature and art, was favourably regarded by edi- 
tors, and was fast becoming a personage of influence 
and authority. 

It might seem that the list of Stevenson's friends 
already included as many as one man could retain in 
intimate relation; but for these two, and others yet 
to come, there was ample room. Only six months 
before, in one of the morbid moods he was gradually 
putting behind him, as he sloughed the unhappi- 
ness of his youth, he had written down the chief 
desires of his heart. " First, good health; secondly, 
a small competence; and thirdly, O Du Lieber Gott! 
friends." Seldom was any prayer more fully an- 
swered than this last petition. Had he but known, 
the means of gaining it were already within his hands 
in a measure rarely granted to any man. At this 
very time, Colvin tells us, "his social charm was 
already at its height. He was passing through a 
period of neatness between two of Bohemian careless- 
ness as to dress, and so its effect was immediate. " 
But indeed at any time he "had only to speak in 
order to be recognised in the first minute for a witty 



96 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

and charming gentleman, and within the first five 
for a master spirit and man of genius." 

At all events, by his hosts and by his fellow-guests 
his attraction was quickly felt, and the month of 
August, which passed away with no other episodes 
than a croquet party or a school feast, was neverthe- 
less a landmark in his career. 

From Suffolk he returned to Swanston with in- 
creased confidence and raised hopes, and at once 
plunged into work. The essay on "Roads" was 
completed and sent to the Saturday Review, and he 
began a paper on "Walt Whitman." 

But the preceding winter had tried him in mind 
and body, and he was now further weakened by a 
severe attack of diphtheria. In February his father 
had come across a draft of the constitution of the 
L. J. R. (p. 79), and had taken the society as seriously 
as the youngest of its members could have wished. 
The acute misunderstanding was limited to part of 
this year, and then by degrees it passed away. When 
Mr. Stevenson had determined beforehand on any 
course of action, he would throw himself into the part 
he had proposed with an energy and emphasis which 
were often, unconsciously to himself, far in excess of 
the situation or of the words he had intended to 
employ. " I have the family failing of taking strong 
views," he had written to his future wife in 1848, 
"and of expressing those views strongly." A scene 
with him was no figure of words: he suffered the 
extreme of the emotions he depicted; and the knowl- 
edge and fear of this result made any difference be- 
tween them very painful to his son. The differences 



LIFE AT FIVE-AND-TWENTY 97 

arose, or threatened to arise again, the winter was 
coming on, and Louis' work came to an end. 

An idea had arisen that he might be called not to 
the Scottish, but to the English Bar; and as his hopes 
were now directed towards London, the scheme was 
very welcome. To London accordingly he went in 
the last week of October with a view of entering one 
of the Inns of Court and passing the preliminary 
examination, if he could convince the examiners. 
The scheme was quickly laid aside. His friends in 
town found him so unwell that they at once insisted 
on his seeing Dr. (afterwards Sir Andrew) Clark. 
The diagnosis was plain — nervous exhaustion with a 
threatening of phthisis; the prescription was chiefly 
mental — a winter in the Riviera by himself, and 
in complete freedom from anxiety or worry. His 
mother came and saw him off, and on the 5th of No- 
vember he started for Mentone, three weeks before 
his article on "Roads" had appeared in the Portfolio, 
of which P. G. Hamerton was editor. 

How he sat in the sun and read George Sand his 
letters tell us; and all that he thought and felt and 
saw during the first six weeks was written down next 
spring in Ordered South: a paper "not particularly 
well written," he thought, but "scrupulously cor- 
rect." In the meantime, in "numbness of spirit" 
he rested and recovered strength. It was one of 
the halting places of life, and there he sat by the 
wayside to recruit and prepare for a fresh advance. 
Mrs. Sitwell's letters brightened his solitude, as they 
had already cheered and helped him in Edinburgh. 
His answers to her show better than any analysis or 



98 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

description the solace and the strength which came 
to him from her hands. 

In his hotel at Mentone Stevenson made the ac- 
quaintance of two or three congenial people, who 
lent him Clough and other books which he read with 
interest; but as yet he was too weak for any serious 
reading, and was hardly fit for the exertion of talking 
to strangers. 

By the middle of December one stage of his con- 
valescence was already made. He was now to expe- 
rience another advantage of his newly formed friend- 
ships, as Sidney Colvin joined him at Mentone and 
supplied the intimate conversation and discussion 
which had become his chief need. There was no 
great change in his life; they passed the time quietly 
enough, together or apart, as the fancy took them; 
reading Woodstock aloud, or plunged in talk on any 
or all subjects; sitting in the olive yards or in a boat, 
basking in the sun; or in "some nook upon St. Mar- 
tin's Cape, haunted by the voice of breakers, and 
fragrant with the threefold sweetness of the rosemary 
and the sea pines and the sea." 

For a few days they went to Monte Carlo, where 
they "produced the effect of something unnatural 
upon the people,' ' because where everybody gambled 
all night, they spent their evenings at home; but they 
soon returned to Mentone, and there in the hotel to 
which the chance of accommodation brought them, 
were fortunate in finding a small but very cosmo- 
politan society, which greatly brightened Stevenson's 
stay, when his companion had to leave him. The 
chief members of this little coterie were a Georgian 



LIFE AT FIVE-AND-TWENTY 99 

lady and her sister with two little daughters; M. 
Robinet, a French painter; and an American and his 
wife and child, "one of the best story-tellers in the 
world, a man who can make a whole table-d'hote 
listen to him for ten minutes while he tells how he lost 
his dog and found him again." With the younger 
of the Russian children, Nelitschka, " a little polyglot 
button" of only two and a half, who spoke six lan- 
guages, or fragments of them, Stevenson at once 
struck up a great friendship, and his letters for the 
next three months are full of her, and her sayings 
and doings. 

She was almost, if not quite, the only very young 
child who ever came much under his notice after the 
days of his own boyhood, and she seems to have been 
so extraordinarily brilliant and fascinating a little 
creature that there is nothing to wonder at in the 
great attraction which she had for him. The ladies, 
moreover, were women of cultivation and refinement; 
full of spirits, and always devising fresh amusements: 
telling fortunes, writing characters, dancing Russian 
dances and singing Russian airs, and charmed, to 
Stevenson's intense delight, by what he afterwards 
loved to call, with James Mohr, "the melancholy 
tunes of my native mountains." It was one of the 
episodes of real life; an introduction of characters, 
who never reappear in the story, an episode such 
as literature rejects; but it made Stevenson's path 
smoother at a time when he was unable to climb 
steep places, and it took his thoughts off himself and 
hastened his recovery, while he was still unfit for 
prolonged exertion or any serious study. 



ioo LIFE OF STEVENSON 

Their circle was afterwards increased by the arrival 
of another friend of the Russians, the prince whose 
clever and voluble talk he has described in one of 
his letters, by whom he was nearly persuaded to take 
a course of Law, during the summer, at the Univer- 
sity of Gottingen. At this time and place also began 
Stevenson's friendship with Mr. Andrew Lang, who 
was then staying in the Riviera and one day called 
upon Sir Sidney Colvin. The impression Stevenson 
produced was, Mr. Lang confesses, "not wholly 
favourable ": — 

" A man of twenty- two, his smooth face, the more 
girlish by reason of his long hair, was hectic. Clad 
in a wide blue cloak, he looked nothing less than 
English, except Scotch. " In spite of so tepid a be- 
ginning the acquaintance prospered, and grew into 
a friendship which endured until the end. 

When Sidney Colvin, after one brief absence, finally 
returned to England, his companion was already work- 
ing again, though still far from strong. Even by the 
middle of March, he says that he is "idle; but a man 
of eighty can't be too active, and that is my age." 

In April he described the course of his gradual 
recovery to his mother. " I just noticed last night a 
curious example of how I have changed since I have 
been a little better: I burn two candles every night 
now; for long, I never lit but one, and when my eyes 
were too weary to read any more, I put even that 
out and sat in the dark. Any prospect of recovery 
changed all that." 

In the beginning of April he reached Paris, and 
there found his cousin R. A. M. Stevenson, who had 



LIFE AT FIVE-AND-TWENTY 101 

now taken up painting as a profession, and had been 
studying during the winter at Antwerp. This was 
Louis' first independent acquaintance with Paris, and 
he delayed his return to Edinburgh till the end of 
the month, when the weather in the North might be 
more favourable. But this was only a measure of 
caution, and for several years to come we hear no 
more of his health as affecting his movements, or 
seriously hindering his work. 

On his return home he found that many of his 
troubles had vanished. He had not of course solved 
the riddle of the universe, nor adjusted all contending 
duties, nor mastered all his impulses and appetites. 
He had not learned to handle his pen with entire 
precision, or to say exactly the thing he wished in the 
manner perfectly befitting it; nor was his way of life 
open before him. But his relations with his parents 
were on the old footing once more, and in the religious 
question a modus vivendi seems to have been estab- 
lished with his father. 

The question of his allowance was now reconsid- 
ered. The man who had been trusted freely with all 
the money necessary for his expensive sojourn abroad, 
could not be put back to his small pocket-money, and 
it was settled that in future he was to receive seven 
pounds a month, more even than he himself had 
thought of suggesting. 

Money at his command and friends in the South 
forthwith changed his mode of life. For the whole 
seven years of the preceding period he had only 
crossed the Border thrice, but henceforth he was 
never continuously at home for more than three 



io2 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

months at a time. Three springs and two autumns 
he spent in Edinburgh or at Swanston, but in the 
intervals his face became familiar in London, Paris, 
and the resorts of painters near Fontainebleau. But 
all the time he never went far afield, and between 
1874 and 1879 seems not to have travelled further 
than three hundred miles from the English coast. 

In Edinburgh his attention still had for some little 
time to be given to the study and pursuit of the law. 
In the winter session of 1874 he resumed his attend- 
ance at the lectures of the University professors on 
Conveyancing, Scots Law, and Constitutional Law 
and History. On July 14, 1875, he successfully 
passed his Final Examination, and two days after 
was called to the Scottish Bar. On the 25th he had 
his first, complimentary brief, and the following day 
he sailed for London on his way to France. " Accept 
my hearty congratulations on being done with it," 
Jenkin wrote. "I believe that is the view you like 
to take of the beginning you must have made." Ste- 
venson returned, however, in the end of September, 
and during the next few months made some sort of 
effort to practise, although he does not seem to have 
impressed anybody outside his own family, as being 
a serious lawyer. He frequented the great hall of 
the Parliament House, which, like Westminster in 
old days, is the centre of the courts, and the haunt 
of advocates waiting for business. The brass plate 
with his name, usual in Scotland, was affixed to the 
door of 17 Heriot Row, and he had the fourth or fifth 
share in the services of a clerk, whom it is alleged that 
he did not know by sight. He had in all four briefs, 



LIFE AT FIVE-AND-TWENTY 103 

and the total of his fees never reached double figures. 
One piece of business might, he told me, have as- 
sumed real importance, but a compromise brought it 
to an end. "If it had prospered," he said, "I might 
have stuck to the Bar, and then I suppose I should 
have been dead of the climate long ago." 

The Advocates' Library in the Parliament House 
is the best in Scotland; and here Stevenson hoped to 
get some of his literary work done, while he was 
waiting for briefs. But the division of interests and 
the attractive company of his fellows were too un- 
settling; he soon returned to his own upper room 
in his father's house, and came no more to the Salle 
des Pas Perdus. 

But although, after he abandoned Parliament 
House, he was no longer confined to the city of his 
birth, it was still his home and the point of return 
from his wanderings in England or abroad. Three 
of the first four friends named in the preceding 
chapter were, like himself, now released from the 
necessity of living constantly in Edinburgh, yet their 
connection with it was maintained; and they con- 
tinued more or less frequently to visit it; while 
Professor Jenkin and Charles Baxter remained resi- 
dent there as before. 

Nor did Stevenson's manner of life, at the times 
when he was in Edinburgh, suffer any sudden change. 
We must think of him in Scotland at this time as 
living chiefly in the society of a few intimates, still 
wandering about the city and its neighbourhood, 
" scraping acquaintance with all classes of man and 
woman-kind," travelling deliberately through his ages 



104 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

and getting the heart out of his own liberal education, 
still to some extent in bonds to himself, though he had 
escaped in a degree from circumstance. No longer 
as a supplement to professional studies, but now as 
his avowed business, he wrote and rewrote, he blot- 
ted and recast his essays, tales, verses and plays as 
before, and accomplished much solid work. From 
general society he still held aloof, and it was in 1875 
that he last took part in the Jenkins' theatricals, 
acting the Duke in Twelfth Night. 

" He played no character on the stage as he could 
play himself among his friends " was his verdict upon 
Jenkin, and it was even more applicable to himself 
where his own friends were concerned; but as yet he 
could not modify his attitude towards the burgess of 
the Philistine, or forgo the intolerance of youth. 

All this did not heighten his popularity or the esti- 
mation in which he was held, nor was he generally 
looked upon at this time as likely ever to bring hon- 
our to his native city. Mostly people perceived little 
more than the exterior of the lad, with his dilapidated 
clothes, his long hair, and distaste for office life. 
The companions who knew him best did not spare 
their criticism or laughter, and it was at this time 
that names like Flibbertigibbet and Mr. Fastidious 
Brisk were aimed at his volubility and exaggeration 
on the one hand, and a supposed tendency to spright- 
liness and affectation of phrase upon the other. 

It was chiefly the older men who looked with a 
kindly glance upon the manifestations of his youth, 
such as old Mr. Baxter, who had for him as warm an 
appreciation as his son Charles had found in turn at 



LIFE AT FIVE-AND-TWENTY 105 

the hands of Thomas Stevenson; J. T. Mowbray, the 
family lawyer, a grim, dry, warm-hearted old bach- 
elor, whom I have always fancied to be the original 
of Mr. Utterson in Jekyll and Hyde; Robert Hunter, 
of whom Stevenson has left a speaking portrait in the 
second part of Talk and Talkers; and other friendly 
veterans. These seem best to have realised the good 
that was in him, and indeed the husk is hardly notice- 
able to those who can read (as his contemporaries 
could not) how the frail lad found a lost child of three 
crying in the street in the middle of the night, and 
carried him half over Edinburgh, wrapped in his own 
greatcoat, while he sought in vain for the missing 
parents. 

And still, as in his childhood and as in most of his 
books, happiness came to him chiefly in the country. 
Long walks in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh; 
summer evenings in the garden at Swanston, or on 
Caerketton or Allermuir; days passed in canoeing on 
the Forth at Queensferry, or skating upon Dudding- 
ston Loch — these were the chief part of his outdoor 
life, and the last of his time that was spent amid the 
scenery of his boyish days. 

In August, 1874, he was yachting for a month with 
Sir Walter Simpson and Mr. T. Barclay on the West 
coast of Scotland. " Some of the brightest moments 
of my life were passed over tinned mulligatawny in 
the cabin of a sixteen-ton schooner storm-stayed in 
Portree Bay." The Heron, a fore and aft schooner, 
had two Devon men as crew, and their labours were 
supplemented by the help of the owners and their 
friends. " My health is a miracle. I expose myself 



io6 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

to rain, and walk, and row, and over-eat myself. I 
eat, I drink, I bathe in the briny, I sleep." His re- 
turn to Swanston was characteristically announced: 
" I left my pipe on board the yacht, my umbrella in 
the dog-cart, and my portmanteau by the way," and 
he reached home without his luggage, in a hat bor- 
rowed from one of his friends and a coat belonging to 
another. 

In the following winter there came to him a new 
friendship. " Yesterday, Leslie Stephen, who was 
down here to lecture, called on me and took me up 
to see a poor fellow, a poet who writes for him and 
who has been eighteen months in our infirmary, and 
may be, for all I know, eighteen months more. It 
was very sad to see him there in a little room with 
two beds, and a couple of sick children in the other 
bed; a girl came in to visit the children, and played 
dominoes on the counterpane with them; the gas 
flared and crackled, the fire burned in a dull, eco- 
nomical way; Stephen and I sat on a couple of chairs, 
and the poor fellow sat up in his bed with his hair and 
beard all tangled, and talked as cheerfully as if he 
had been in a king's palace, or the great King's palace 
of the blue air." 

Here was no ordinary patient: the poet was W. E. 
Henley, who had come to Edinburgh to be under the 
care of Lister. The cheerful talk was but the first of 
many; if we may treat Stevenson's essays as autobi- 
ographical, for a part of his youth he was wont to 
"avoid the hospital doors, the pale faces, the sweet 
whiff of chloroform," but that time was now past. 
Here was a man of kindred spirit to himself, in need 



LIFE AT FIVE-AND-TWENTY 107 

of the companionship that none could better give, and 
from that time forth Stevenson was his friend, and 
placed himself, and all that he had, at his disposal. 
He soon returned, bringing books, piles of Balzac, 
"big yellow books, quite impudently French,'' and 
with the books he brought Charles Baxter and 
others of his friends. 

In these years he first discovered that taste for 
classical music which was afterwards fostered by 
successive friends. The revelation dated from a con- 
cert in Edinburgh for which some one had given him 
a ticket, and to which he went with reluctance. It 
was a Beethoven quartet, I think, that then burst 
upon him for the first time, and on that day he per- 
manently added another to the many pleasures he so 
keenly enjoyed. 

To London in these years he paid frequent visits, 
and several times stayed with Sidney Colvin at 
Cambridge, besides spending a week or two with him 
at Hampstead in June, 1874. This last occasion, 
however, and a return to the same place in the autum 
of that year were practically indistinguishable from 
his life in London. On June 3d, 1874, after only six 
weeks' delay, he was elected a member of the Savile 
Club, which had been founded five years before, and 
was still in its original house, 15, Savile Row. This 
was for the next five years the centre of his London 
life, and though it would probably be a mistake to 
speak as if it were at once to him all that it afterwards 
became, yet, since he was of all men the most club- 
bable, from the beginning it gave him ample oppor- 
tunities of acquaintance with men of various tastes. 



io8 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

many of them of great ability, even if they had not 
yet achieved or were not achieving a reputation. 
Some of the members he already knew. Sir Charles 
Dilke and Mr. Andrew Lang he had previously met in 
the Riviera; Professor Masson was an Edinburgh 
friend of the family; to Dr. Appleton, editor of the 
Academy, and Mr. Walter Pollock, editor of the 
Saturday Review, he was soon introduced; but it 
would be long to enumerate the friends, and idle to 
recapitulate the acquaintances, that Stevenson soon 
made within those walls. 

Into formal society nothing would ever have in- 
duced him to go in London any more than in Edin- 
burgh; he invariably refused the opportunities which 
presented themselves to him. In 1874, when he 
came to London for the first time under new auspices, 
he seems to have met Miss Thackeray, Mrs. Lynn 
Linton, and a few other well-known people, chiefly at 
the house of Sir Leslie Stephen, to whom he had been 
introduced by Sidney Colvin. His great and natural 
desire to see Carlyle was frustrated, for Stephen, on 
whose kind offices he depended, found the sage in one 
of his darker moods and at a moment of irritation. 
He had just been suffering at the hands of an inter- 
viewer for whom he fancied Stephen was responsible, 
and when Stevenson was mentioned as a young Scot 
who was most anxious to meet him, and who had 
taken to the study of Knox, the senior would only 
say that he did not see why anybody should want 
either to see his "wretched old carcase" or to say 
anything more about Knox, and that the young man 
had better apply when he had put his studies into 



LIFE AT FIVE-AND-TWENTY 109 

an articulate shape. So Stevenson never met his 
fellow-countryman. 

Besides the visits to London and Cambridge there 
were many journeys and excursions; and the impor- 
tance of such travel to him in these days may be 
estimated by the degree in which it formed the topic 
of his early writings. Between 187 1 and 1876 no 
less than nine of his papers deal with travel or the 
external appearance of places known to him; and it 
is scarcely necessary to remind the reader that his 
first three books were the Inland Voyage, the Pic- 
turesque Notes on Edinburgh, and the Travels with a 
Donkey in the Cevennes. 

In 1875 came the walk up the valley of the Loing 
with Sir Walter Simpson, in which Stevenson's cos- 
tume led to the incarceration described in An Epi- 
logue to An Inland Voyage, and this trip being cut 
short, he joined his parents, as he had intended, at 
Wiesbaden, and went with them to Homburg and 
Mainz. 

In 1876 he spent the second week in January walk- 
ing in Carrick and Galloway, when he slept a night 
at Ballantrae, and later in the year, after a visit in 
August to the Jenkins, near Loch Carron, he joined 
Sir Walter Simpson again and took the canoe journey 
of the Inland Voyage from Antwerp to Brussels, and 
then from the French frontier by the Oise almost to 
the Seine. 

These journeys and the general change in Steven- 
son's life were rendered possible, as I have said, by 
the liberality of his father (some ten years later he 
wrote, "I fall always on my feet; but I am con- 



no LIFE OF STEVENSON 

strained to add that the best part of my legs seems 
to be my father"), yet it must not be supposed that 
Stevenson even now was often in funds. He was 
open-handed to a fault; and he had many wants of 
his own which often went unsatisfied. It is to this 
period that a story belongs which he was fond of 
telling against himself. He was staying in London, 
and had protracted his visit to the extreme limit of 
his resources. On his way back to the North he 
arrived at the station with a sum barely sufficient 
for the cheapest ticket, available only by a night jour- 
ney, and a newly bought copy of Mr. Swinburne's 
Queen Mother and Rosamond. On learning his defi- 
ciency, he tried his best powers of persuasion on the 
booking-clerk, but in vain: the man, in his blindness, 
refused to accept the book as any part of the pay- 
ment, and, if I remember right, Stevenson passed the 
day in the station without food, and reached home 
next morning in a famished condition. 

Thus, as we have seen, with the exception of his 
release from law, and the friendship with W. E. 
Henley, conditions, in Edinburgh remained much the 
same; the Savile and the people he met there were, 
together with Sidney Colvin's advice and help, the 
principal feature of his life in England; it is to 
France that we must turn for the other influences 
chiefly affecting him, and for the circumstances of 
most importance in determining his development at 
this period. In the winter of 1873-74 he had, as we 
have seen, renewed acquaintance with the Riviera, 
which in later days was to become yet more familiar. 
For the present he returned to that neighbourhood 



LIFE AT FIVE-AND-TWENTY in 

no more, but there was no year from 1874 to 1879 in 
which he did not pay one or more visits of several 
weeks' duration to another part of France. Except 
for the time that he was in the Cevennes and on his 
cruise down the Oise, he stayed mostly in the out- 
skirts of the forest of Fontainebleau, in the valley of 
the Loing, or in Paris itself. Sometimes, as at Monas- 
tier, he was alone; sometimes, as at Nemours or at 
Cernay la Ville, he was with his cousin Bob or Sir 
Walter Simpson; but for the most part he lived in 
familiar intercourse with the artists who frequented 
his favourite resorts. French was the only foreign 
tongue he ever mastered, and in that he acquired 
real proficiency. His knowledge of the language and 
literature was considerable, and its influence on his 
work was entirely for good, as it incresed the delicacy 
and clearness of his style, and yet left his originality 
unimpaired. 

When his friends were painting, he often betook 
himself to lonely walks and meditations among the 
rocks and woods, but company and conversation 
counted for a great deal. "I knew three young men 
who walked together daily for some two moths in a 
solemn and beautiful forest and in cloudless summer 
weather; daily they talked with unabated zest, and 
yet scarce wandered that whole time beyond two 
subjects — theology and love." 

His earliest and perhaps his most frequent haunt 
was Barbizon. It had been the home of Millet, and 
its fields were the scene of the Angelus. In the vil- 
lage there existed an inn which was reserved for the 
artists, a strange society compounded of all national- 



ii2 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

ities, in which French, English, and Americans pre- 
dominated. Stevenson himself has described it in an 
essay. 

"I was for some time a consistent Barbizonian; 
et ego in Arcadia vixi; it was a pleasant season; and 
that noiseless hamlet lying close among the borders of 
the wood is for me, as for so many others, a green spot 
in memory. The great Millet was just dead; the 
green shutters of his modest house were closed; his 
daughters were in mourning. The date of my first 
visit was thus an epoch in the history of art. 

"Siron's inn, that excellent artists' barrack, was 
managed upon easy principles. At any hour of the 
night, when you returned from wandering in the 
forest, you went to the billiard-room and helped your- 
self to liquors, or descended to the cellar and returned 
laden with beer or wine. The Sirons were all locked 
in slumber; there was none to check your inroads; 
only at the week's end a computation was made, the 
gross sum was divided, and a varying share set down 
to every lodger's name under the rubric, estrats. At 
any hour of the morning, again, you could get your 
coffee or cold milk and set forth into the forest. The 
doves had perhaps wakened you, fluttering into your 
chamber; and on the threshold of the inn you were 
met by the aroma of the forest. Close by were the 
great aisles, the mossy boulders, the interminable field 
of forest shadow. There you were free to dream and 
wander. And at noon, and again at six o'clock, a 
good meal awaited you on Siron's table. The whole 
of your accommodation, set aside that varying item 
of the estrats t cost you five francs a day; your bill 



LIFE AT FIVE-AND-TWENTY 113 

was never offered you until you asked for it; and if 
you were out of luck's way, you might depart for 
where you pleased and leave it pending. 

"Theoretically, the house was open to all comers; 
practically, it was a kind of club. The guests pro- 
tected themselves, and, in so doing, they protected 
Siron. Formal manners being laid aside, essential 
courtesy was the more rigidly exacted; the new arri- 
val had to feel the pulse of the society; and a breach 
of its undefined observances was promptly punished. 
A man might be as plain, as dull, as slovenly, as free 
of speech as he desired; but to a touch of presumption 
or a word of hectoring these free Barbizonians were as 
sensitive as a tea-party of maiden ladies. I have seen 
people driven forth from Barbizon; it would be diffi- 
cult to say in words what they had done, but they de- 
served their fate. They had shown themselves un- 
worthy to enjoy these corporate freedoms; they had 
pushed themselves; they had 'made their head'; they 
wanted tact to appreciate the 'fine shades' of Barbi- 
zonian etiquette. And, once they were condemned, 
the process of extrusion was ruthless in its cruelty; 
after one evening with the formidable Bodmer, the 
Bailly of our commonwealth, the erring stranger 
was beheld no more; he rose exceeding early the 
next day, and the first coach conveyed him from 
the scene of his discomfiture. These sentences of 
banishment were never, in my knowledge, delivered 
against an artist; such would, I believe, have been 
illegal; but the odd and pleasant fact is this, that 
they were never needed. Painters, sculptors, writers, 
singers, I have seen all of these in Barbizon, and 



ii 4 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

some were sulky, and some were blatant and inane; 
but one and all entered into the spirit of the associa- 
tion. . . . 

" Our society, thus purged and guarded, was full 
of high spirits, of laughter, and of the initiative of 
youth. The few elder men who joined us were still 
young at heart, and took the key from their com- 
panions. We returned from long stations in the for- 
tifying air, our blood renewed by the sunshine, our 
spirits refreshed by the silence of the forest; the 
Babel of loud voices sounded good; we fell to eat and 
play like the natural man; and in the high inn cham- 
ber, panelled with indifferent pictures, and lit by 
candles guttering in the night air, the talk and laugh- 
ter sounded far into the night. It was a good place 
and a good life for any naturally minded youth; 
better yet for the student of painting, and perhaps 
best of all for the student of letters. He enjoyed a 
strenuous idleness full of visions, hearty meals, long, 
sweltering walks, mirth among companions; and, 
still floating like music through his brain, foresights 
of great works that Shakespeare might be proud to 
have conceived, headless epics, glorious torsos of 
dramas, and words that were alive with import. . . . 
We were all artists; almost all in the age of illusion, 
cultivating an imaginary genius, and walking to the 
strains of some deceiving Ariel; small wonder, in- 
deed, if we were happy!" 

Barbizon, however, was by no means the only re- 
sort of painters in this neighbourhood, nor the only 
one which Stevenson frequented: in the same paper 
he enumerates its rivals from his full knowledge. 



LIFE AT FIVE-AND-TWENTY 115 

Marlotte, Monti gny, and Chailly-en-Biere he knew; 
Cernay la Ville was a favourite of his cousin Bob; 
but it was Grez which, in spite of an unpromising 
introduction, was his favourite quarters, and has the 
most important place in his history. 

" Barbizon [Summer '75]. 

" My Dear Mother, — I have been three days at a 
place called Grez, a pretty and very melancholy vil- 
lage on the plain. A low bridge, with many arches 
choked with sedge; green fields of white and yellow 
water-lilies; poplars and willows innumerable; and 
about it all such an atmosphere of sadness and slack- 
ness, one could do nothing but get into the boat and 
out of it again, and yawn for bedtime. ... I was 
very glad to be back again in this dear place, and 
smell the wet forest in the morning." 

But later he wrote how delightful it was "to wake 
in Grez, to go down the green inn-garden, to find the 
river streaming through the bridge, and to see the 
dawn begin across the poplared level. The meals 
are laid in the cool arbour, under fluttering leaves. 
The splash of oars and bathers, the bathing costumes 
out to dry, the trim canoes beside the jetty, tell of a 
society that has an eye to pleasure. There is ' some- 
thing to do' at Grez. Perhaps, for that very reason, 
I can recall no such enduring ardours, no such glories 
of exhilaration, as among the solemn groves and un- 
eventful hours of Barbizon. But Grez is a merry 
place after its kind; pretty to see, merry to inhabit. 
The course of its pellucid river, whether up or down, 
is full of attractions for the navigator; the mirrored 



u6 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

and inverted images of trees; lilies, and mills, and 
the foam and thunder of weirs. And of all noble 
sweeps of roadway, none is nobler, on a windy dusk, 
than the highroad to Nemours between its lines of 
talking poplar." 

If the country had the more influence in the end, 
Paris provided more variety and more diversion. 
There Stevenson stayed, in all manner of lodgings, 
varying from Meurice's Hotel (which was little to his 
liking) to students' accommodation in the Quartier 
Latin, and scattered throughout a region extending 
from Montmartre on the north to Mont Parnasse on 
the south. 

At one time he writes : "I am in a new quarter, and 
flane about in a leisurely way. I dine every day in a 
cremerie with a party of Americans, an Irishman, and 
sometimes an English lady." Again: "I am living 
along with some fellows, and we partly make our own 
food, and have great fun marketing." Another time: 
" I have been engaged in a wild hunt for books — all 
forenoon, all afternoon, with occasional returns to 
Rue Racine with an armful. I have spent nearly all 
my money; and if I have luck in to-day's hunt, I 
believe I shall lay my head on the pillow to-night a 
beggar. But I have had goodish luck, and a heap of 
nice books. Please advance me £10 of my allow- 
ance. . . . Heaps of articles growing before me. 
Hurray." An attempt to work in some of the public 
libraries of Paris failed: the face of officialism was 
too daunting. "They are worse than banks — if that 
be possible. ... In public offices of all kinds I feel 
like Esther before Ahasuerus." 



LIFE AT FIVE-AND-TWENTY 117 

This was the period when his letters were least 
frequent and least satisfactory, but of his sojourns in 
Paris no other memorial survives except Mr. Will. H. 
Low's Chronicle of Friendships and the first chapters 
of The Wrecker, which partly in detail and wholly in 
spirit are drawn from Stevenson's recollections of 
these years. In addition I have collected a few frag- 
ments of letters and papers, which may help to eke 
out the scanty material for a picture of that time. 

"nth October, Paris. — Here I am so far on my way 
home. . . . Yesterday I had a splendid day. Lux- 
embourg in the morning. Breakfast. Bob, Gaudez 
the sculptor, Low and I: hours of very good talk in 
the French idiom. All afternoon in the Louvre, till 
they turned us out unwilling. At night, the Francais, 
Rome Vaincue, an impossible play, with Sarah Bern- 
hardt as the blind grandmother, most sublime to 
behold. At breakfast we had lobster mayonnaise, 
kidneys, brochet, and tomates farcies, with lots of 
Carton. Dinner was a mere hurried sustentation of 
the immortal spirit before exposing it to another 
excitement. A splendid day, but two running would 
not do." 

The theatre was a great delight to him. Although 
he had read (and written) plays from his early years, 
had revelled in the melodramas of the toy-theatre, 
and had acted with the Jenkins and in other private 
theatricals, I find no reference to his having visited a 
theatre before December, 1874, when he found Irv- 
ing's Hamlet "interesting (for it is really studied) 
but not good"; and there is no sign of his having 
been really impressed until he saw Salvini as Mac- 



i ig LIFE OF STEVENSON 

beth at Edinburgh in the spring of 1876. Of this 
performance he wrote a criticism for the Academy, 
which he afterwards condemned as dealing with a 
subject that was still beyond the resources of his art. 
He himself, I am told, was never a tolerable actor, 
and certainly was never allotted a part of any import- 
ance. But his enthusiasm for the drama was great, 
and during these years was heightened and instructed 
by the two chief friends who shared his taste — Fleem- 
ing Jenkin and W. E. Henley. 

One of his visits to the theatre led to a very char- 
acteristic scene, described long afterwards in a letter 
to Mr. Archer. The play had been the Demi-Monde 
of Dumas fils, in the last act of which Olivier de Jalin 
employs an unworthy stratagem against the woman 
who had been his mistress. 

" I came forth from that performance in a breath- 
ing heat of indignation. . . . On my way down the 
Francais stairs, I trod on an old gentleman's toes, 
whereupon, with that suavity which so well becomes 
me, I turned about to apologise, and on the instant, 
repenting me of that intention, stopped the apology 
midway, and added something in French to this 
effect: 'No, you are one of the laches who have been 
applauding that piece. I retract my apology.' Said 
the old Frenchman, laying his hand on my arm, and 
with a smile that was truly heavenly in temperance, 
irony, good-nature, and knowledge of the world, ' Ah, 
monsieur, vous etes bien jeune.' " 

To this time also belongs the story reported by Mr. 
Andrew Lang. Stevenson, one day at a cafe, hearing 
a Frenchman say that the English were cowards, 



LIFE AT FIVE-AND-TWENTY 119 

promptly hit him across the face. "Monsieur, 
vous m'avez frappe!" said the Gaul. "A ce qu'il 
parait," said the Scot, and there the incident ended. 
It is an instance the more of his fearlessness; for, 
although he would never have hesitated, he was 
quite incompetent to fight a duel with either pistol 
or sword. 

The effect produced upon outsiders must some- 
times have been rather bewildering. He used to tell 
how one day he and his cousin Bob, happening to be 
rather more in funds than usual, went to dine in one 
of the cafes of the Palais Royal. "The cafe was not 
very full," so I remember the story, "and there was 
nobody near us, but presently a gentleman and his 
wife came in and sat down at the next table. They 
were evidently people of good position, well dressed 
and distinguished in appearance. But they were 
talking French, and we paid not the slightest atten- 
tion to them. We had lately got hold of the works 
of Thomas Aquinas, and our conversation was on 
the most extraordinary medley of subjects — on men, 
women, and things, with a very large leaven of mediae- 
val theology, and on all we spoke in English with the 
most startling frankness and with the most bewilder- 
ing transitions. Bob is the best talker in the world; 
I never knew him more brilliant, and I did my best. 

"Those people sat and had their dinner and took 
not the slightest notice of us, but talked quietly to one 
another in Parisian French. Just before they got 
up to go, the gentleman turned to his wife and said to 
her in English without a trace of accent, ' My dear, 
won't you take anything more?' I have often won- 



120 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

dered who they were, and what on earth they thought 
of us." 

His deficiencies in letter- writing and his protracted 
absences from home led very naturally to protests 
from his parents and especially from his mother. 
The answer was characteristic. 

"Euston Hotel, 16th Oct., 1874. 
"You must not be vexed at my absences. You 
must understand that I shall be a nomad, more or 
less, until my days be done. You don't know how 
much I used to long for it in old days; how I used 
to go and look at the trains leaving, and wish to go 
with them. And now, you know, that I have a little 
more that is solid under my feet, you must take my 
nomadic habits as a part of me. Just wait till I am 
in swing, and you will see that I shall pass more of 
my life with you than elsewhere; only take me as I 
am, and give me time. I must be a bit of a vaga- 
bond; it's your own fault, after all, isn't it? You 
shouldn't have had a tramp for a son." 

While the man was in the making during these 
years, the writer also was passing through the stages 
of a development which was unusually protracted. 
The perfecting of his style was necessarily a work of 
time, but in the meanwhile, if he had seen his way 
to use the gifts at his command, his love of romance, 
his imagination, and his vivid interest in life might 
well have enabled him to produce work which would 
have secured him immediate popularity and reward. 

Nothing of the sort, however, was accomplished, 



LIFE AT FIVE-AND-TWENTY 121 

and, high as his standard always was, this delay may 
well have been a gain for his ultimate success. Dur- 
ing the six years between his first appearance as a 
printed and paid author and the publication of the 
Travels with a Donkey, his published work consisted 
of some six-and-twenty magazine articles, chiefly 
critical and social essays, just half of which were in 
the Comhill Magazine; two small books of travel; 
two books in serial instalments, afterwards reprinted; 
and five short stories also in periodicals. There were 
besides a few rejected articles, a certain amount of 
journalism, and at least eight stories or novels, none 
of which ever saw the light, as well as a play or two 
and some verses, a small part of which were ulti- 
mately included in his published works. 

In 1874 he had five articles in four different maga- 
zines: these included "Ordered South" in Macmil- 
lan's, and, still more important, the paper on "Victor 
Hugo's Romances" in the Comhill. The former, 
which took him three months to write, was his first 
work ever republished in its original form; the latter, 
which was anonymous, but afterwards reappeared in 
Familiar Studies of Men and Books, marked, in his 
own judgment, the beginning of his command of 
style. Long afterwards in Samoa, in answer to a 
question, he told me that in this essay he had first 
found himself able to say several things in the way 
in which he felt they should be said. It may also be 
noticed that this was his first appearance in the 
magazine which by the discernment of Leslie Stephen 
did so much for him in taking his early work. 

In January, 1875, Stevenson proposed to The 



122 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

Academy a series of papers on the Parnassiens — de 
Banville, Coppee, Soulary, and Prudhomme — and 
when this was not accepted, he devoted a good deal 
of his time to the study of the French literature of 
the fifteenth century, which resulted in the articles 
on Villon and Charles of Orleans. The same read- 
ing led to the experiments in the French verse metres 
of that date which were almost contemporary with 
the work of Mr. Andrew Lang and of Mr. Austin 
Dobson, who brought the Ballade and Rondeau 
back to favour in England. 

To 1876 we owe the only piece of dramatic criti- 
cism that Stevenson ever published, and four articles 
in the Comhill Magazine, which from this time on- 
ward marked all his contributions to its pages with 
the initials R. L. S. 

The same year thrice saw the rejection of the 
article on "Some Portraits by Raeburn," afterwards 
included in Virginibus Puerisque. It was refused 
in turn by the Comhill, the Pall Mall Gazette, and 
Blackwood's Magazine, though it is only fair to 
Stephen to say that he helped the author in trying 
to place it elsewhere. 

The event of this year was, of course, the canoe 
voyage. Stevenson, as we have already seen, had 
for some time shared his friends' taste for navigating 
the Firth of Forth in these craft, which the enthu- 
siasm of "Rob Roy" Macgregor had made popular 
ten years before. A good deal of time was spent, as 
we have seen, on the river at Grez, and canoes were 
introduced there by the English colony, headed by 
Sir Walter Simpson and his brother, and by R. A. M. 



LIFE AT FIVE-AND-TWENTY 123 

Stevenson, who devised a leather canoe of his own 
"with a niche for everything," and, as his friends 
said, "a place for nothing." Mr. Warington Baden- 
Powell had published in the pages of the Cornhill 
Magazine in 1870 the log of the Nautilus and I sis 
canoes on a journey through Sweden and on the 
Baltic. But the idea of the journey itself seems to 
have been suggested by Our Autumn Holiday on 
French Rivers, by Mr. J. L. Molloy, published in 
1874, the account of a journey up the Seine and 
down the Loire in a four-oared outrigger. 

That the cruise itself was on the whole rather a 
cheerless experience is seen by the following letter. 

"Compiegne, gth Sept. 1876. [Canoe Voyage.] 

"We have had deplorable weather quite steady 
ever since the start; not one day without heavy 
showers; and generally much wind and cold wind 
forby. ... I must say it has sometimes required a 
stout heart; and sometimes one could not help sym- 
pathising inwardly with the French folk who hold up 
their hands in astonishment over our pleasure jour- 
ney. ... I wake at six every morning; and we are 
generally in bed and asleep before half-past nine. 
Last night I found my way to my room with a dark 
cloud of sleep over my shoulders, so thick that the 
candle burnt red at about the hour of 8.40. If that 
isn't healthy, egad, I wonder what is." 

But to this voyage and its tranquil setting the 
irony of Time has since given a fresh and strange in- 
terest. The route of the canoes was by canal from 
Antwerp to Brussels, and thence (after a train jour- 



i2 4 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

ney) from Maubeuge by the rivers Sambre and Oise 
to Pontoise near the Seine. The central part of 
their course lay through places whose names became 
familiar to foreign ears in 1914, and now fill our 
memories with associations wholly different from 
the peaceful tenour of a holiday voyage. Maubeuge, 
Landrecies, Moy, La Fere, Chauny, Noyon, Precy, 
and the rivers Aisne and Oise are well known now 
to many brave men who have never heard of the 
Inland Voyage or its author. But even when Steven- 
son was traversing these waters the French nation 
was preparing by autumn manoeuvres for the great 
struggle of forty years later, and through his descrip- 
tions there runs the military note. At Compiegne 
" Reservery and general Militarismus (as the Germans 
call it) were rampant. A camp of conical white tents 
without the town looked like a leaf out of a picture 
Bible; sword belts decorated the walls of the cafes; 
and the streets kept sounding all day long to military 
music" German shells from the siege of La Fere still 
embellished the iron-room at Moy: at "La Fere of 
Cursed Memory" itself the artillery were practising, 
and the town was full of military reservists, who 
"walked speedily and wore their formidable great- 
coats." And of Landrecies he wrote : " It was just the 
place to hear the round going by at night in the dark- 
ness, with the solid tramp of men marching, and the 
startling reverberations of the drum. It reminded 
you that even this place was a point in the great war- 
faring system of Europe, and might on some future 
day be ringed about with cannon smoke and thunder, 
and make itself a name among strong towns." 



CHAPTER VII 
TRANSITION— 1876-79 

"You may paddle all day long; but it is when you come back 
at nightfall, and look in at the familiar room, that you find 
Love or Death awaiting you beside the stove; and the most 
beautiful adventures are not those we go to seek." 

The concluding words of "An Inland Voyage." 

THE next three years of Stevenson's life were so 
closely similar to the three preceding, that at 
first sight, but for his own selection of the age 
of five-and-twenty as the limit of youth, it might seem 
almost unnecessary to draw any division between 
them. He continued to spend his time between 
France, London, and Edinburgh, to lead a more or 
less independent life, and to give the best of his 
talents and industry to his now recognised profession. 
The year 1877 was marked by the acceptance of the 
first of his stories ever printed — A Lodging for the 
Night — and from that date his fiction began to take 
its place beside, and gradually to supersede, the es- 
says with which his career had opened. The month 
of May 1878 saw not only the appearance of his first 
book — An Inland Voyage — but also the beginning of 
his two first serial publications — the New Arabian 
Nights and the Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh; and 
they were followed at the end of the year by the 
Edinburgh in book form, and in June 1879 by the 
Travels with a Donkey. All these, however, were but 

125 



126 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

a measure of the author's growing reputation, and 
of the facility with which he could now find a pub- 
lisher. 

Original as these writings were, and unlike the 
work of his contemporaries, none of them constituted 
any new departure in his life or any alteration in his 
attitude to the world : and the change that now came 
arrived from another quarter. His friendships, as we 
have seen, counted for a great deal with Stevenson, 
and though the roll of them was not yet closed, and 
ended indeed only at his death, it was at the begin- 
ning of this period that he made the acquaintance 
which affected him more than any other — he now 
met for the first time the lady who was afterwards to 
be his wife. 

Already it is becoming difficult to realise that there 
was a time not long distant when study for all the 
professions, including that of art, was hedged about 
with arbitrary restrictions for women. At the date 
of which I am speaking these limitations had been 
removed to some extent in Paris as far as the studios 
were concerned, but the natural consequences had 
not yet followed in country quarters, and women 
artists were as yet unknown in any of the colonies 
about Fontainebleau. Hitherto these societies had 
been nearly as free from the female element as were 
afterwards the early novels of Stevenson himself: the 
landlady, the chambermaid, the peasant girl passed 
across the stage, but the leading roles were filled by 
men alone. But when Stevenson and Sir Walter 
Simpson, the "Arethusa" and the "Cigarette," came 
from the Inland Voyage to their quarters at Grez, 



TRANSITION 127 

they found the colony in trepidation at the expected 
arrival of the invader. 

The new-comers, however, were neither numerous 
nor formidable; being only an American lady and 
her two children — a young girl and a boy. Mrs. 
Osbourne had seen her domestic happiness break up 
in California, and had come to France for the educa- 
tion of her family. She and her daughter had thrown 
themselves with ardour into the pursuit of painting, 
and thus became acquainted with some of the English 
and American artists in Paris. After profiting by 
the opportunities afforded them in the capital, they 
were in search of country lodgings, and accordingly, 
having taken counsel with their artist friends, they 
came to Grez. 

So here for the first time Stevenson saw the woman 
whom Fate had brought half-way across the world 
to meet him. He straightway fell in love; he knew 
his own mind, and in spite of all dissuasions and 
difficulties, his choice never wavered. The difficul- 
ties were so great and hope so remote that nothing 
was said to his parents or to any but two or three of 
his closest friends. But in the meantime life took on 
a cheerful hue, and the autumn passed brightly for 
them all until the middle of October, when Stevenson 
must return to Edinburgh, there to spend the winter. 

In January 1877 he came to London for a fort- 
night, and first met Edmund Gosse, who, being im- 
mediately added to the ranks of his intimate friends, 
has given us a most vivid and charming description 
of the effect produced on strangers at that time by 
Stevenson. 



i 2 8 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

"It was in 1877, or late in 1876, that I was pre- 
sented to Stevenson, at the old Savile Club, by Mr. 
Sidney Colvin, who thereupon left us to our devices. 
We went downstairs and lunched together, and then 
we adjourned to the smoking-room. As twilight 
came on I tore myself away, but Stevenson walked 
with me across Hyde Park, and nearly to my house. 
He had an engagement, and so had I, but I walked 
a mile or two back with him. The fountains of talk 
had been unsealed, and they drowned the conven- 
tions. I came home dazzled with my new friend, 
saying, as Constance does of Arthur, ' Was ever such 
a gracious creature born?' 

" . . . . Those who have written about him from 
later impressions than those of which I speak, seem 
to me to give insufficient prominence to the gaiety 
of Stevenson. It was his cardinal quality in those 
early days. A childlike mirth leaped and danced in 
him; he seemed to skip upon the hills of life. He 
was simply bubbling with quips and jests; his in- 
herent earnestness or passion about abstract things 
was incessantly relieved by jocosity; and when he 
had built one of his intellectual castles in the sand, a 
wave of humour was certain to sweep in and destroy 
it. I cannot, for the life of me, recall any of his 
jokes; and written down in cold blood, they might 
not be funny if I did. They were not wit so much 
as humanity, the many-sided outlook upon life. I 
am anxious that his laughter-loving mood should not 
be forgotten, because later on it was partly, but I 
think never wholly, quenched by ill-health, responsi- 
bility, and the advance of years. 



TRANSITION 129 

"My experience of Stevenson during these first 
years was confined to London, upon which he would 
make sudden piratical descents, staying a few days 
or weeks, and melting into air again. He was much 
at my house; and it must be told that my wife and 
I, as young married people, had possessed ourselves 
of a house too large for our slender means immedi- 
ately to furnish. The one person who thoroughly 
approved of our great, bare, absurd drawing-room 
was Louis, who very earnestly dealt with us on the 
immorality of chairs and tables, and desired us to 
sit always, as he delighted to sit, upon hassocks on 
the floor. Nevertheless, as armchairs and settees 
straggled into existence, he handsomely consented to 
use them, although never in the usual way, but with 
his legs thrown sideways over the arms of them, or 
the head of a sofa treated as a perch. In particular, 
a certain shelf, with cupboards below, attached to a 
bookcase, is worn with the person of Stevenson, who 
would spend half an evening while passionately dis- 
cussing some great question of morality or literature, 
leaping sideways in a seated posture to the length of 
this shelf, and then back again. He was eminently 
peripatetic, too, and never better company than walk- 
ing in the street, this exercise seeming to inflame his 
fancy." 

It was in these years especially that he gave the 
impression of something transitory and unreal, some- 
times almost inhuman. 

"He was careful, as I have hardly known any 
other man to be, not to allow himself to be burdened 
by the weight of material things. It was quite a jest 



130 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

with us that he never acquired any possessions. In 
the midst of those who produced books, pictures, 
prints, bric-ti-brac, none of these things ever stuck to 
Stevenson. There are some deep-sea creatures, the 
early part of whose life is spent dancing through the 
waters; at length some sucker or tentacle touches a 
rock, adheres, pulls down more tentacles, until the 
creature is caught there, stationary for the remainder 
of its existence. So it happens to men, and Steven- 
son's friend caught the ground with a house, a fixed 
employment, a ' stake in life ' ; he alone kept dancing 
in the free element, unattached." 

These were the days when he most frequented the 
Savile Club, and the lightest and most vivacious part 
of him there came to the surface. He might spend 
the morning in working or business, and would then 
come to the Club for luncheon. If he were so fortu- 
nate as to find any congenial companions disengaged, 
or to induce them to throw over their engagements, 
he would lead them off to the smoking-room, and 
there spend an afternoon in the highest spirits and 
the most brilliant and audacious talk. 

The whim of independence already mentioned was 
carried out to an extreme by the two Stevenson 
cousins, about this time, in one of their visits to 
Paris, an experience which Louis afterwards trans- 
ferred to the pages of The Wrecker. "Stennis," it 
may be explained, was the nearest approach to their 
name possible to Barbizon, and accordingly it was 
as Stennis aine and Stennis frere that the pair were 
always known. 

"The two Stennises had come from London, it 



TRANSITION 131 

appeared, a week before with nothing but greatcoats 
and tooth-brushes. It was expensive to be sure, for 
every time you had to comb your hair a barber must 
be paid, and every time you changed your linen one 
shirt must be bought and another thrown away; but 
anything was better, argued these young gentlemen, 
than to be the slaves of haversacks. 'A fellow has 
to get rid gradually of all material attachments: that 
was manhood,' said they; 'and as long as you were 
bound down to anything — house, umbrella, or port- 
manteau — you were still tethered by the umbilical 
cord.' " 

When he broke through this rule, his inconsistency 
was equally original and unexpected. 

"Paris, Jan. 1878. — I have become a bird fancier. 
I carry six little creatures no bigger than my thumb 
about with me almost all the day long; they are so 
pretty; and it is so nice to waken in the morning 
and hear them sing." Six or seven years later he 
again alludes to these or to other similar pets. 
"There is only one sort of bird that I can tolerate 
caged, though even then I think it hard, and that is 
what is called in France the Bec-d'Argent. I once 
had two of these pigmies in captivity; and in the 
quiet, bare house upon a silent street where I was 
then living, their song, which was not much louder 
than a bee's, but airily musical, kept me in a per- 
petual good-humour. I put the cage upon my table 
when I worked, carried it with me when I went for 
meals, and kept it by my head at night: the first 
thing in the morning these maestrini would pipe up." 

The following letter written from Paris has pre- 



132 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

served a record of one of the thousand little kind 
and thoughtful acts, which were so characteristic of 
Stevenson. Most of them are nameless and unre- 
membered, but this — thanks to his perception of its 
humour — has been handed down to us. 

"ist Feb. 1877, Paris. — My dear mother, — I have 
ordered a picture. There is magnificence for you. 

Poor is, as usual, hard up, and I knew wanted 

to make me a present of a sketch; so I took the first 
word and offered him 50L for one. You should have 
seen us. I was so embarrassed that I could not fin- 
ish a single phrase, and kept beginning, 'You know,' 

and 'You understand,' and 'Look here, ,' and 

ending in pitiful intervals of silence. I was perspiring 

all over. Suddenly I saw begin to break out all 

over in a silvery dew; and he just made a dive at me 
and took me in his arms — in a kind of champion 
comique style, you know, but with genuine feeling. " 

This letter is also an indirect confirmation of what 
has been said in the preceding chapter as to Steven- 
son's poverty. About this time, however, his father 
followed the precedent set in his own case, and paid 
to Louis as an instalment of his patrimony a consider- 
able sum, amounting, I believe, to not less than a 
thousand pounds. The fact is certain, the date and 
exact details have been lost. In the end Stevenson 
derived small benefit himself. "The little money 
he had," as Sir Sidney Golvin says, "was always 
absolutely at the disposal of his friends." In 1877 
he had still ^800, but, owing to misfortunes befalling 
his friends, in none of which was he under any obliga- 
tion to intervene, within less than two years nothing 



TRANSITION 133 

of it remained. His income from writing was as yet 
extremely small, the payment for his essays amount- 
ing to a guinea a page, so that until 1878 he probably 
from all sources had never made ^50 in any one year. 

If the year 1877 had little to show, it was only 
because much of it was spent in preparing for the 
next year's harvest. 1878 was at once in quantity 
and in quality the richest year he had yet known. 
An Inland Voyage was published in May: the jour- 
ney with the donkey was taken, and an elaborate 
diary of it kept: there were four essays and a story 
in Cornhill; three essays, a story, and the New 
Arabian Nights in London; a story in Temple Bar; 
while Picturesque Notes of Edinburgh ran in the 
Portfolio from June till December, and then came 
out in book form. 

London was a weekly journal, founded by Robert 
Glasgow Brown, Stevenson's colleague on the Edin- 
burgh University Magazine, and after December 1877 
edited by W. E. Henley, who some time before had 
left Edinburgh. 

Much of Henley's lighter verse appeared first in 
its columns, and among its less irregular contrib- 
utors were Mr. Andrew Lang, and the late Grant 
Allen and James Runciman. It was a staunch oppo- 
nent of Mr. Gladstone and all his works, and won 
the favourable notice of Lord Beaconsfield. But the 
foundations of its finance were laid in sand, and it 
survived its originator little more than a year. It 
was the first paper edited by Henley, but though he 
never admitted to his columns work more brilliant 
of its kind, the Arabian Nights series was supposed 



i 3 4 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

by more than one of the proprietors sufficiently to 
account for the unpopularity of their journal. 

The conception of these stories is recorded in a 
letter to R. A. M. Stevenson. "The first idea of all 
was the hansom cabs, which I communicated to you 
in your mother's drawing-room in Chelsea. The 
same afternoon the Prince de Galles and the Suicide 
Club were invented, and several more now forgot- 
ten." The first half was actually written partly at 
Burford Bridge, partly at Swanston, while the Rajah's 
Diamond was written at Monastier, before the author 
set out with his dnesse. The Sire de Maletroit's Door 
(Door being substituted for the original "Mouse- 
trap") was invented in France, first told over the 
fire one evening in Paris, and ultimately written at 
Penzance. 

Providence and the Guitar was based upon a story 
told by a strolling French actor and his Bulgarian 
wife, who had stayed at Grez. The man had played 
inferior parts at a good theatre, and the woman also 
had been on the stage. They were quiet, innocent 
creatures, who spent all the daytime in fishing in the 
river. They had their meals on a bare table in the 
kitchen, and in the evening they sang in the dining- 
room and had a little "tombola" as in the story. 
They made the best of the most hideous poverty, but 
the worst of it was that they were forced to leave 
their only child with a peasant woman, while they 
were tramping from village to village. She had let 
the child fall, and it was in consequence a hunch- 
back. Stevenson had much talk with them, taking 
great pleasure in their company and delight in hear- 



TRANSITION 135 

ing of their experiences. But there is no further 
foundation for the legend that he went strolling with 
them, or ever acted to a French audience. When his 
story appeared in print he sent to the pair the money 
it brought him, and he received a most charming let- 
ter of thanks, which unfortunately has disappeared. 

In 1877 Stevenson having spent part of February 
and of June and July in France, returned there 
again from August to November, and spent some 
time with Sir Walter Simpson either at Nemours or 
at Moret where the Loing joins the Seine. Their 
experience of the Oise had suggested the charms 
of the life on board a barge, their imagination was 
kindled, nothing would content them but to acquire 
such a vessel for themselves, well found in all things 
they could desire, picturesque and romantic as craft 
had never yet been; and in this fashion they should 
make a leisurely progress along the waterways of 
Europe. 

" There should be no white fresher, and no green 
more emerald than ours, in all the navy of the canals. 
There should be books in the cabin, and tobacco 
jars, and some old Burgundy as red as a November 
sunset, and as fragrant as a violet in April. " 

The Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne was 
"procured and christened," but on that cruise and 
under that flag she never started. A financial diffi- 
culty arose, and both barge and canoes alike had to 
be sold. 

In 1878 he seems to have spent no more than a 
fortnight in Scotland until December, although he 
was in London four or five times. In April he stayed 



136 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

with his parents at the inn at Burford Bridge, under 
Box Hill, " with its arbours and green garden and 
silent, eddying river," "known already as the place 
where Keats wrote some of his Endyrnion, and Nelson 
parted from his Emma," and connected hereafter, it 
may be, with the New Arabian Nights, and the 
friendship between Stevenson and George Meredith, 
of which this visit saw the beginning. All this sum- 
mer he was acting as private secretary to Professor 
Fleeming Jenkin, who was a juror at the International 
Exhibition at Paris; the only post approaching any 
regular position or employment that Stevenson ever 
held. 

An Inland Voyage had been accepted by Messrs. 
Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. at the beginning of the 
year; and on the 17th February we find the author 
writing from Paris: "I have now been four days 
writing a — preface, a weary preface." 

A week later he says : " I am getting a lot of work 
ready in my mind, and as soon as I am able to square 
my elbows, I shall put it through my hands rapidly. 
What a blessing work is! I don't think I could face 
life without it; and how glad I am I took to literature ! 
It helps me so much. " 

In the whirl of Paris, during the same month, he 
wrote this letter to his father, sitting at a cafe in the 
Quartier Latin: 

"Cafe de la Source, Bd. St. Michel, Paris, i$th Feb. 1878. 

" A thought has come into my head which I think 
would interest you. Christianity is, among other 
things, a very wise, noble, and strange doctrine of life. 



TRANSITION 137 

Nothing so difficult to specify as the position it oc- 
cupies with regard to asceticism. It is not ascetic. 
Christ was of all doctors (if you will let me use the 
word) one of the least ascetic. And yet there is a 
theory of living in the gospels which is curiously in- 
definable, and leans towards asceticism on one side, 
although it leans away from it on the other. In fact, 
asceticism is used therein as a means, not as an end. 
The wisdom of this world consists in making oneself 
very little in order to avoid many knocks; in prefer- 
ring others, in order that, even when we lose, we shall 
find some pleasure in the event; in putting our desires 
outside of ourselves, in another ship, so to speak, so 
that, when the worst happens, there will be some- 
thing left. You see, I speak of it as a doctrine of 
life, and as a wisdom for this world. People must be 
themselves, I suppose. I feel every day as if religion 
had a greater interest for me; but that interest is still 
centred on the little rough-and-tumble world in which 
our fortunes are cast for the moment. I cannot trans- 
fer my interests, not even my religious interests, to 
any different sphere. ... I have had some sharp 
lessons and some very acute sufferings in these last 
seven-and-twenty years — more even than you would 
guess. I begin to grow an old man; a little sharp, I 
fear, and a little close and unfriendly; but I still 
have a good heart, and believe in myself and my fel- 
low-men and the God who made us all. . . . There 
are not many sadder people in the world, perhaps, 
than I. I have my eye on a sick-bed; I have written 
letters to-day that it hurts me to write, and I fear it 
will hurt others to receive; I am lonely and sick and 



138 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

out of heart. Well, I still hope; I still believe; I still 
see the good in the inch, and cling to it. It is not 
much, perhaps, but it is always something. 

"There is a fine text in the Bible, I don't know 
where, to the effect that all things work together for 
good to those who love the Lord. . . . Strange as it 
may seem to you, everything has been, in one way 
or the other, bringing me a little nearer to what I 
think you would like me to be. 'Tis a strange world, 
indeed, but there is a manifest God for those who 
care to look for him. 

"This is a very solemn letter for my surroundings 
in this busy cafe; but I had it on my heart to write it; 
and, indeed, I was out of the humour for anything 
lighter. — Ever your affectionate son, 

"Robert Louis Stevenson. 

" P. S. — While I am writing gravely, let me say one 
word more. I have taken a step towards more inti- 
mate relations with you. But don't expect too much 
of me. . . . Try to take me as I am. This is a rare 
moment, and I have profited by it; but take it as a 
rare moment. Usually I hate to speak of what I 
really feel, to that extent that when I find myself 
cornered, I have a tendency to say the reverse. 

"R. L. S." 

This graver tone was beginning to grow upon him, 
for all his spirits and light-heartedness. It seemed, 
indeed, as if happiness had shown him her face only 
that he might be filled with inextinguishable longing 
and regret. Mrs. Osbourne had hitherto remained in 
France, but this year she returned to California. All 



TRANSITION 139 

was dark before them. She was not free to follow 
her inclination, and though the step of seeking a 
divorce was open to her, yet the interests and feelings 
of others had to be considered, and for the present 
all idea of a union was impossible. Stevenson, on 
his side, was still far from earning his own livelihood, 
and could not expect his parents to give their assis- 
tance or even their consent to the marriage. So there 
came the pain of parting without prospect of return, 
and he who was afterwards so long an exile from his 
friends, now suffered separation from his dearest by 
the breadth of a continent and an ocean. 

At first he continued to lead his life as if nothing 
had happened. After his Exhibition work was over, 
he went to Monastier, a mountain town near the 
sources of the Loire, and there occupied himself with 
a strenuous effort in completing both the New Ara- 
bian Nights and the Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh, 
both at this time in their serial career. 

At Monastier he spent some three weeks and com- 
pleted his work, finding time also for some pencil 
sketches of the country and of the people, and ob- 
taining, as always, a pleasant footing among the in- 
habitants, most of whom probably had never seen 
an Englishman (or Scotchman) in their lives. 

On September 23rd he set out with his donkey on 
his eleven days' journey through the Cevennes, but 
here too his thoughts pursued him. 

"I heard the voice of a woman singing some sad, 
old, endless ballad not far off. It seemed to be about 
love and a bel amoureux, her handsome sweetheart; 
and I wished I could have taken up the strain and 



140 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

answered her, as I went on upon my invisible wood- 
land way, weaving, like Pippa in the poem, my own 
thoughts with hers. What could I have told her? 
Little enough; and yet all the heart requires. How 
the world gives and takes away, and brings sweet- 
hearts near only to separate them again into distant 
and strange lands; but to love is the great amulet 
which makes the world a garden; and "hope, which 
comes to all," outwears the accidents of life, and 
reaches with tremulous hand beyond the grave and 
death. Easy to say: yea, but also, by God's mercy, 
both easy and grateful to believe !" 

The Inland Voyage had been published in May, 
1878, producing no more sensation than a small book, 
written for the sake of style by an unknown author, 
was likely to produce among the public, although the 
reviews showed uniform favour and occasional dis- 
cernment. The author wrote to his mother: "I was 
more surprised at the tone of the critics than I sup- 
pose anyone else. And the effect it has produced 
on me is one of shame. If they liked that so much, 
I ought to have given them something better, that's 
all. And I shall try to do so. Still it strikes me as 
odd; and I don't understand the vogue." 

The Travels with a Donkey were written in the 
winter and published in June, 1879. In the spring 
Louis wrote to R. A. M. Stevenson: "My book is 
through the press. It has good passages. I can say 
no more. . . . Lots of it is mere protestations to F., 
most of which I think you will understand. That is 
to me the main thread of interest. Whether the 
damned public But that's all one." 



TRANSITION 141 

He returned to London and began to collaborate 
with Henley in a play based on the latest of his 
drafts of Deacon Brodie, which he had not touched 
since he was nineteen. 

It was probably at this time that he made the social 
experiment recorded in the Amateur Emigrant of 
practising upon the public by " going abroad through 
a suburban part of London simply attired in a sleeve- 
waistcoat." 

"The result was curious. I then learned for the 
first time, and by the exhaustive process, how much 
attention ladies are accustomed to bestow on all male 
creatures of their own station; for, in my humble rig, 
each one who went by me caused a certain shock of 
surprise and a sense of something wanting. In my 
normal circumstances, it appeared, every young lady 
must have paid me some passing tribute of a glance; 
and though I had often been unconscious of it when 
given, I was well aware of its absence when it was 
withheld. My height seemed to decrease with every 
woman who passed me, for she passed me like a dog. 
This is one of my grounds for supposing that what 
are called the upper classes may sometimes pro- 
duce a disagreeable impression in what are called 
the lower; and I wish some one would continue my 
experiment, and find out exactly at what stage of 
toilette a man becomes invisible to the well-regulated 
female eye." 

But life was not to be lived upon the old terms. 
His heart was elsewhere, and the news which reached 
him was disquieting. For some time it was fairly 
good; then Mrs. Osbourne fell seriously ill. There 



i 4 2 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

had been, there could be, no restoration of her home 
life; but it appeared that she would be able to obtain 
a divorce without causing any unnecessary distress 
to her family, and in this conjuncture Stevenson could 
not see clearly what his course of action ought to 
be. He was first at Swanston with Henley, finish- 
ing Deacon Brodie; then in London; at Swanston 
again, this time alone, writing his chapters on Lay 
Morals; then at the Gareloch with his parents. In 
May he went to London, and, after staying with 
George Meredith, crossed over to France. Had he 
found a companion, he would perhaps have gone 
to the Pyrenees, but he spent most of his time at 
Cernay la Ville, and returned to London in the end 
of June. 

The Travels with a Donkey had been published by 
that time, obtaining the same unsubstantial success 
as the Inland Voyage, although, contrary to its au- 
thor's own judgment of the two books, it afterwards 
had slightly the better sale. 

On 14th July he returned to Edinburgh, and by the 
30th his mind was made up — to California he must 
go. From Edinburgh he came back to London, pre- 
sumably to make arrangements for his start; and 
wherever he went, he found his friends unanimous in 
their opinion that he ought to stay at home. Under 
these circumstances it seemed to him so hopeless 
to expect any other judgment on the part of his 
parents, that he did not even go through the form 
of consulting them on the matter, and with open 
eyes went away, knowing that he need look for no 
further countenance from home. Perhaps he hardly 



TRANSITION 143 

realised the distress which he would inevitably cause 
his parents by leaving them without a word and in 
almost total ignorance of the hopes and motives 
which inspired him. 



CHAPTER VLCL 
CALIFORNIA— 1879-80 

"What a man truly wants, that will he get, or he will be 
changed in trying." — R. L. S., Aphorism. 

"To My Wife. 

"Trusty, dusky, vivid, true, 
With eyes of gold and bramble-dew, 
Steel -true and blade -straight 
The great artificer 
Made my mate. 

Honour, anger, valour, fire; 
A love that life could never tire, 
Death quench or evil stir, 
The mighty master 
Gave to her. 

Teacher, tender, comrade, wife, 
A fellow-farer true through life, 
Heart-whole and soul-free 
The august father g 

Gave to me." 

Songs of Travel, No. xxvi. 

FROM London he went north, and on August 
7th, 1879, sailed from the Clyde in the steam- 
ship Devonia, bound for New York. She car- 
ried a number of emigrants, but Stevenson, though 
mixing freely with them, had, chiefly to obtain a table 
for his writing, taken his passage in the second cabin, 
which was almost indistinguishable from the steer- 

144 



CALIFORNIA 145 

age. His object in travelling in this fashion was, in 
the first instance, economy, and next to that, a desire 
to gain first-hand knowledge for himself of emigrants 
and emigration, which might be of immediate use for 
making a book and of ultimate service to him in a 
thousand ways. He suffered a good deal on the voy- 
age, being already anxious and highly strung before 
he started, but he stuck manfully to his work and 
wrote "in a slantindicular cabin, with the table play- 
ing bob-cherry with the ink-bottle," the greater part 
of The Story of a Lie. The rest of his time he devoted 
to making the acquaintance of his fellow-passengers, 
learning their histories, studying their characters, and 
— as anyone may see between the lines of The Ama- 
teur Emigrant — rendering them endless unobtrusive 
services, and helping and cheering them in every way 
possible. 

The voyage passed without event, and the steamer 
arrived at New York on the evening of the 18th of 
August. Stevenson passed the night in a shilling 
Irish boarding-house, Re-Union House, No. 10 West 
Street. " A little Irish girl," he writes, "is now read- 
ing my book aloud to her sister at my elbow; they 
chuckle, and I feel flattered. P.S. — Now they yawn, 
and I am indifferent: such a wisely conceived thing 
is vanity." 

Within four-and-twenty hours of his first arrival he 
was already on his way as an emigrant to the Far 
West; a chief part of his baggage being " Bancroft's 
History of the United States in six fat volumes." 

The railway journey began in floods of rain and the 
maximum of discomfort. The record of it is in the 



146 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

hands of all to read, and I need say only that it occu- 
pied from a Monday evening to the Saturday morning 
of the following week, and that the tedium and stress 
of the last few days in the emigrant train proper were 
almost unbearable. 

On the 30th of August Stevenson reached San 
Francisco, but so much had the long journey shaken 
him that he looked like a man at death's door. The 
news so far was good; Mrs. Osbourne was better, but 
that was all. To recover from the effects of his hard- 
ships he forthwith went another hundred and fifty 
miles to the south, and camped out by himself in the 
coast range of mountains beyond Monterey. But he 
had overtaxed his strength, and broke down. Two 
nights he "lay out under a tree in a sort of stupor," 
and if two frontiersmen in charge of a goat-ranche 
had not taken him in and tended him, there would 
have been an end of his story. 

" I am now lying in an upper chamber, with a clink- 
ing of goat bells in my ears, which proves to me that 
the goats are come home and it will soon be time to 
eat. The old bear-hunter is doubtless now infusing 
tea; and Tom the Indian will come in with his gun 
in a few minutes." 

Here he spent a couple of weeks, passing the morn- 
ings in teaching the children to read, and then went 
down to Monterey, where he remained until the mid- 
dle of December. In those days it still was a small 
Mexican town, altered but slightly by the extraor- 
dinarily cosmopolitan character of the few strangers 
who visited it In his own words, it was "a place 
of two or three streets, economically paved with sea- 



CALIFORNIA 147 

sand, and two or three lanes, which were water- 
courses in the rainy season, and at all times were rent 
up by fissures four or five feet deep. There were 
no street lights. . . . The houses were for the most 
part built of unbaked adobe brick, many of them 
old for so new a country, some of very elegant pro- 
portions, with low, spacious, shapely rooms, and 
walls so thick that the heat of summer never dried 
them to the heart. . . There was no activity but in 
and around the saloons, where people sat almost all 
day long playing cards. . . The smallest excursion 
was made on horseback. You would scarcely ever 
see the main street without a horse or two tied to 
posts, and making a fine figure with their Mexican 
housings. . . In a place so exclusively Mexican as 
Monterey, you saw not only Mexican saddles, but 
true Vaquero riding — men always at the hand-gallop 
up hill and down dale, and round the sharpest cor- 
ner, urging their horses with cries and gesticulations 
and cruel rotatory spurs, checking them dead with a 
touch, or wheeling them right-about-face in a square 
yard. . . Spanish was the language of the streets. 
It was difficult to get along without a word or two of 
that language for an occasion. The only commu- 
nications in which the population joined were with 
a view to amusement. A weekly public ball took 
place with great etiquette, in addition to the numer- 
ous fandangoes in private houses. There was a 
really fair amateur brass band. Night after night, 
serenaders would be going about the street, some- 
times in a company and with several instruments and 
voices together, sometimes severally, each guitar be- 



148 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

fore a different window. It was a strange thing to 
lie awake in nineteenth-century America, and hear 
the guitar accompany, and one of these old, heart- 
breaking Spanish love-songs mount into the night 
air, perhaps in a deep baritone, perhaps in that high- 
pitched, pathetic, womanish alto which is so common 
among Mexican men, and which strikes on the un- 
accustomed ear as something not entirely human, but 
altogether sad." 

Here Stevenson found quarters curiously to his 
taste, which was simple, though discriminating. He 
lodged with the doctor, and for his meals went to a 
restaurant. 

" Of all my private collection of remembered inns 
and restaurants — and I believe it, other things being 
equal, to be unrivalled — one particular house of en- 
tertainment stands forth alone. I am grateful, in- 
deed, to many a swinging signboard, to many a rusty 
wine-bush; but not with the same kind of gratitude. 
Some were beautifully situated, some had an admi- 
rable table, some were the gathering-places of ex- 
cellent companions; but take them for all in all, not 
one can be compared with Simoneau's at Monterey. 

"To the front, it was part barbers' shop, part bar; 
to the back, there was a kitchen and a salle a manger. 
The intending diner found himself in a little, chill, 
bare, adobe room, furnished with chairs and tables, 
and adorned with some oil sketches roughly brushed 
upon the wall in the manner of Barbizon and Cernay. 
The table, at whatever hour you entered, was already 
laid with a not spotless napkin, and, by way of 
epergne, with a dish of green peppers and tomatoes, 










H 



CALIFORNIA 149 

pleasing alike to eye and palate. If you stayed there 
to meditate before a meal, you would hear Simoneau 
all about the kitchen, and rattling among the dishes." 

The fragment breaks off, or we should have had a 
picture of M. Simoneau, the proprietor, with whom 
Stevenson " played chess and discussed the universe" 
daily. At his table there a sat down, day after day, 
a Frenchman, two Portuguese, an Italian, a Mexican, 
and a Scotsman; they had for common visitors an 
American from Illinois, a nearly pure-blood Indian 
woman, and a naturalised Chinese; and from time 
to time a Switzer and a German came down from 
country ranches for the night." 

This society afforded Stevenson most of the diver- 
sion that he could now spare the time to enjoy. Of 
his adventures in the forest he has told us, and 
chiefly of that day, when, setting fire to a tree in mere 
experiment and idleness of mind, he ran for his life 
in fear of being lynched. But during all these weeks 
he was working as he had hardly worked before. 
Half of a novel called A Vendetta in the West was 
written, and the whole of The Pavilion on the Links, 
which he had begun in London, was despatched to 
England. But the strain of exertion and anxiety 
was too great, and " while leading a dull regular life 
in a mild climate," he developed pleurisy, and had 
for a few days to relax his exertions. 

All this time he was the kindly and bright compan- 
ion; his gaiety and courage never flagged. "There 
is something in me worth saying," he wrote to Hen- 
ley, "though I can't find what it is just yet." 

About the middle of December he came to San 



150 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

Francisco, and there hired the cheapest lodging he 
could find, a single room in a poor house in Bush 
Street. All his meals he took outside at some of the 
small restaurants; he lived at seventy cents a day, 
and worked yet harder than before. He made in- 
quiries about work on the San Francisco Bulletin, 
but the payment offered by that newspaper for liter- 
ary articles was too small to be of any use to a writer 
so deliberate. 

But the worst part of the change from Monterey 
was that he was thrown more upon himself. In 
place of the bright social life of the little Spanish 
town, a life such as is common on the Continent of 
Europe, but is hardly to be found in England, he was 
plunged into the terrible solitude of a large city. On 
the 26th December he writes: "For four days I 
have spoken to no one but my landlady or landlord, 
or to restaurant waiters. This is not a gay way to 
pass Christmas, is it? And again: "After weeks in 
this city, I know only a few neighbouring streets; I 
seemed to be cured of all my adventurous whims, and 
even of human curiosity, and am content to sit here 
by the fire and await the course of fortune." 

His friends were very few, and those of but a few 
weeks' standing. They hardly extended, indeed, be- 
yond Virgil Williams and his wife, the artist couple 
to whom The Silverado Squatters was afterwards 
dedicated, and Charles Warren Stoddard, whose pic- 
turesque lodging is commemorated in The Wrecker. 

In Virgil Williams he found a man of great culture 
and refinement, a scholar as well as a painter, who 
was always ready to respond to his verses, and, to- 



CALIFORNIA 151 

gether with his wife, able and eager to discuss the 
literatures of Europe. Their house was always open 
to Stevenson, and their only regret was that he could 
not come more frequently. To Charles Stoddard 
also he was no less welcome a companion; from him 
he borrowed the delightful books of Herman Mel- 
ville, Typee and Onioo, and Stoddard's own South 
Sea Idylls, which charmed Stevenson alike with their 
subject and their style. So here in his darkest hour 
he received the second impulse, which in the end was 
to "cast him out as by a freshet" upon those "ulti- 
mate islands.'' 

San Francisco itself was still far from a prosaic 
place; its early history and its large foreign popula- 
tion rendered it not less dangerous than picturesque. 
Kearney, the Irish demagogue, had only just "been 
snuffed out by Mr. Coleman, backed by his San 
Francisco Vigilantes and three Gatling guns." Ste- 
venson himself was not without experiences, perhaps 
less uncommon there at that time than in other large 
cities. There are rough quarters where it is dan- 
gerous o' nights; cellars of public entertainment 
which the wary pleasure-seeker chooses to avoid. 
Concealed weapons are unlawful, but the law is con- 
tinually broken. One editor was shot dead while I 
was there; another walked the streets accompanied 
by a bravo, his guardian angel. I have been quietly 
eating a dish of oysters in a restaurant, where, not 
more than ten minutes after I had left, shots were 
exchanged and took effect; and one night, about 
ten o'clock, I saw a man standing watchfully at a 
street corner with a long Smith-and- Wesson glittering 



152 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

in his hand behind his back. Somebody had done 
something he should not, and was being looked for 
with a vengeance." 

But his private needs now pressed upon him; 
money was growing scarce; the funds he had brought 
with him were exhausted, and those transmitted from 
England, being partly his own money and partly the 
payment for his recent work, very frequently failed to 
reach him. In the end of January he had to drop from 
a fifty cent to a twenty-five cent dinner, and already 
had directed his friend Charles Baxter to dispose of 
his books in Edinburgh and to send him the proceeds. 

His prospects were gloomy; for although the man- 
uscripts he had sent home were accepted by editors, 
yet the judgment of his friends upon some of them 
was justly unfavourable, and at this crisis he could 
not afford rejection or even delay in payment. 

His correspondence with his parents since his de- 
parture had been brief and unsatisfactory. His 
father, being imperfectly informed as to his motives 
and plans, naturally took that dark view of his son's 
conduct to which his temperament predisposed him. 
But even so, hearing of Louis' earlier illness, he sent 
him a twenty-pound note, though, as fate would have 
it, this was one of the letters that miscarried. 

Lonely, ill, and poor; estranged from his people, 
unsuccessful in his work, and discouraged in his at- 
tempt to maintain himself, Stevenson yet did not lose 
heart or go back for one moment from his resolution. 
He wrote to Baxter: 20th Jan. — "I have great fun 
trying to be economical, which I find as good a game 
to play as any other." 

It was at this time that he wrote the best-known of 



CALIFORNIA 153 

all his verses, the Requiem, beginning, ' ' Under the wide 
and starry sky," which fifteen years later was to mark 
his grave upon the lonely hilltop in Samoa with the spir- 
ited proclamation: " Glad did I live and gladly die." 

He stuck to his work; even, a harder feat, he had 
the determination to give himself a week's holiday. 
But though his spirit was indomitable, his physical 
powers were exhausted; his landlady's small child 
was very ill, and he sat up nursing it. The child 
recovered, but Stevenson a short while afterwards 
broke down, and could go on no more. 

He was, as he afterwards wrote to Mr. Gosse, on 
the verge of a galloping consumption, subject to cold 
sweats, prostrating attacks of cough, sinking fits in 
which he lost the power of speech, fever, and all the 
ugliest circumstances of the disease. 

Fortunately by this date his future wife had ob- 
tained her divorce, and was at liberty to give him as 
nurse those services, for which there was unfortu- 
nately only too frequent occasion during the next 
few years. It was a very anxious time, and he was 
nearer "the grey ferry" than he had been since child- 
hood. Slowly he mended, and his recovery was 
helped by his letters and' telegrams from home. 
Already by the middle of February he must have 
heard that his father admitted that the case was not 
what he supposed, and that if there were as long a 
delay as possible, he was prepared to do his best in 
the matter. At that very date Mr. Stevenson was 
writing again that it was preposterous of Louis to 
scrimp himself, and that if he would inform him 
what money he wanted, it would be sent by tele- 



i 5 4 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

gram, if required. And early in April a telegram 
came, announcing to Louis that in future he might 
count upon two hundred and fifty pounds a year. 
His gratitude was unbounded, he realised very 
clearly what his extremity had been and the fate 
from which he had been rescued. 

To Mr. Baxter again he wrote : 

"It was a considerable shock to my pride to break 
down; but there — it's done, and cannot be helped. 
Had my health held out another month, I should 
have made a year's income; but breaking down when 
I did, I am surrounded by unfinished works. It is a 
good thing my father was on the spot, or I should 
have had to work and die." 

All obstacles were at last removed, and on May 19, 
1880, Robert Louis Stevenson was married to Fanny 
Van de Grift at San Francisco, in the house of the 
Rev. Dr. Scott, no one else but Mrs. Scott and Mrs. 
Williams being present. 

Of the marriage it need only be said that from the 
beginning to the end husband and wife were all in all 
to one another. His friends rejoiced to find in her, 
as Sir Sidney Colvin says, a a character as strong, 
interesting, and romantic almost as his own; an in- 
separable sharer of all his thoughts, and staunch 
companion of all his adventures; the most open- 
hearted of friends to all who loved him; the most 
shrewd and stimulating critic of his work; and in 
sickness, despite her own precarious health, the most 
devoted and most efficient of nurses." 

Two years before his death Stevenson wrote, in 
reference to another love match: "To be sure it is 



CALIFORNIA 155 

always annoying when people choose their own wives; 
and I know only one form of consolation — they know 
best what they want. As I look back, I think my 
marriage was the best move I ever made in my life. 
Not only would I do it again; I cannot conceive the 
idea of doing otherwise." 

Of his devotion to his wife he was even more 
reticent than of his affection to his parents. "I love 
my wife," he once wrote, "I do not know how much, 
nor can, nor shall, unless I lost her." And once or 
twice in letters to those who knew and loved them 
best, he almost unconsciously revealed his affection, 
which, for the rest, is embodied in the lyric written a 
year or two before his death, and printed at the head 
of this chapter. As he lived, so he died, and the last 
moments of his consciousness were occupied with the 
attempt to lift the burden of foreboding which was 
weighing so heavily upon his wife. 

Immediately after the marriage Stevenson and his 
wife and his stepson, Lloyd Osbourne, went to the 
country fifty miles north of San Francisco, to seek 
health in the mountains. How they took possession 
of all that was left of a mining-town, and lived in 
independence among the ruins, is told once for all 
in The Silverado Squatters ; but it is not mentioned 
that Mrs. Stevenson and her boy there sickened of 
diphtheria, and that the anxiety and danger of a 
serious illness were added to their lot. 

By this time Stevenson knew that his father 
and mother were longing for nothing in the world 
so much as to see his face again, to make the 



156 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

acquaintance of his wife, and to welcome her for 
his sake. 

It was not however until July was well advanced 
that the party could leave Calistoga, but on the sev- 
enth of August they sailed from New York, and, ten 
days later, found Thomas Stevenson and his wife 
and Sidney Colvin waiting for them at Liverpool. 

In California the year before, Louis had written of 
his father: "Since I have gone away, I have found 
out for the first time how I love that man; he is 
dearer to me than all, except Fanny." And now his 
joy at seeing his parents was heightened, if possible, 
by the share which his wife had in their reception. 
Any doubts that had existed as to the wisdom of his 
choice were soon driven from their minds, and the 
new-comer was received into their affection with as 
much readiness and cordiality as if it were they and 
not Louis who had made the match. Old Mr. Steven- 
son in particular discovered in his daughter-in-law so 
many points which she possessed in common with 
himself, that his natural liking passed rapidly into 
an appreciation and affection such as are usually the 
result only of years of intimacy. In his own wife's 
notes I find that before his death he made his son 
promise that he would '"'never publish anything with- 
out Fanny's approval." 

In consequence of the new order of things, Swan- 
ston Cottage had finally been given up early in the 
summer, and the family party, passing hastily through 
Edinburgh, went on first to Blair Athol and then to 
Strathpeffer, returning to Heriot Row in the middle 
of September. 




Mrs. 



Robert Louis Stevenson 
(About 1886) 



CALIFORNIA 15; 

The exile's return to his native country was of short 
duration, for the hardships he had endured and his 
consequent illness had rendered him quite unable to 
face a Scottish winter. On consulting his uncle.. Dr. 
George Balfour, the well-known Edinburgh doctor, 
he was informed of his condition, and advised to try 
the climate of the High Alps, which had lately come 
into favour as a resort for patients suffering from 
phthisis. 

Accordingly, on October 7th Stevenson left Edin- 
burgh with his wife and stepson and a new member of 
the family, who held a high place in their affections, 
and was an important element in all their arrange- 
ments for the next half-dozen years. This was a 
black Skye terrier, a present from Sir Walter Simp- 
son, after whom he was called, until "Wattie" had 
passed into " Woggs," and finally became unrecogni- 
sable as "Bosrue." In Heriot Rxrv even* dog wor- 
shipped Thomas Stevenson (with the sole exception 
of "Jura," who was alienated by jealousy) and so 
Louis never had a dog until now who really regarded 
him as owner. But Woggs was a person of great 
character, with views and a temper of his own, en- 
tirely devoted to his master and mistress, and at odds 
with the world at large. 

In London, Dr. Andrew Clark confirmed both the 
opinion and the advice which had been given, and a 
few days only were spent in seeing Stevenson's friends, 
who now found their first opportunity to welcome him 
back and to make the acquaintance of his wife. 



CHAPTER IX 

DAVOS AND THE HIGHLANDS— 1880-82 

"A mountain valley, an Alpine winter, and an invalid's 
weakness make up among them a prison of the most effective 
kind." 

R. L. S. Pall Mall Gazette, 21st February, 1881 

BY the middle of October the party again started, 
made a journey broken by frequent halts, and 
on the fourth of November reached Davos 
Platz, where they were to spend the winter. They 
took up their quarters in the Hotel Belvedere, the 
nucleus of the present large establishment, and there 
they stayed until the following April. 

The great feature of the place for Stevenson was 
the presence of John Addington Symonds, who, hav- 
ing come there three years before on his way to 
Egypt, had taken up his abode in Davos, and was 
now building himself a house. To him, the new- 
comer bore a letter of introduction from Mr. Gosse. 
On November 5th, Louis wrote to his mother: "We 
got to Davos last evening; and I feel sure we shall 
like it greatly. I saw Symonds this morning, and 
already like him; it is such sport to have a literary 
man around. My father can understand me, when 
he thinks what it would be to come up here for a 
winter and find Tait. 1 Symonds is like a Tait to 

1 Professor P. G. Tait, the eminent man of science, Professor of 
Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, 1860-1901: a 
close friend of Thomas Stevenson. 

158 



DAVOS AND THE HIGHLANDS 159 

me; eternal interest in the same topics, eternal cross- 
causewaying of special knowledge. That makes 
hours to fly." And a little later he wrote: " Beyond 
its splendid climate, Davos has but one advantage — 
the neighbourhood of J. A. Symonds. I dare say you 
know his work, but the man is far more interesting." 1 

This first winter Stevenson produced but little. 
The doctor in a few weeks spoke hopefully of his 
case, but the climate, though beneficial in the long 
run, was not at first conducive to any deliberate effort. 

There was much that he disliked in Davos, more 
especially the cut-and-dry walks alone possible to 
him, the monotonous river, the snow (in which he 
could see no colour), and the confinement to a single 
valley. "The mountains are about you like a trap," 
he wrote; "yo,u cannot foot it up a hillside and be- 
hold the sea as a great plain, but live in holes and 
corners, and can change only one for the other." 

The drawbacks of hotel life seem to have affected 
him but little; he had the company of his wife, 
and a constant interest in his stepson, who, having 
brought the toy-press given him the previous spring 
in California and used at Silverado, now devoted to 
printing all the time he could secure from lessons 
with his tutor. 

A characteristic story which I have from Mrs. 
Stevenson belongs to this period. When they were 
leaving for Davos, her father-in-law, warned by the 
experiences of Louis in California, made her promise 
that she would let him know if at any time they were 
in want of money. 

1 Dictionary of National Biography, sub "Symonds." 



i6o LIFE OF STEVENSON 

"The time came," she says, "when Louis had 
influenza and did need more, but he would not let 
me tell his father. I used every argument. At last 
I said, ' What do you think should be done with the 
money your father has so carefully laid by for the use 
of his family?' 'It should be given,' said Louis, 'to 
some young man of talent, who is in poor health and 
could not otherwise afford to get a necessary change 
of climate.' 'Oh, very well,' said I, 'I shall appeal 
to your father at once in the case of a young man 
named Stevenson, who is in just that position.' At 
this Louis could only laugh, and I wrote the story to 
his father, who was much amused by it, and of course 
sent the necessary supplies." 

In these days, indeed, and, throughout his life, he 
was often unreasonable, but this very unreason seems 
always to have had a quality and a charm of its own, 
which only endeared Stevenson the more to those 
who suffered under its caprice, as two other anec- 
dotes of Davos may serve to show. A young Church 
of England parson, who knew him but slightly, was 
roused one morning about six o'clock by a message 
that Stevenson wanted to see him immediately. 
Knowing how ill his friend was, he threw on his 
clothes and rushed to Stevenson's room, only to see 
a haggard face gazing from the bed-clothes, and to 

hear an agonised voice say, "For God's sake , 

have you got a Horace ? " 

Another friend had received from Italy a present 
of some Christmas roses, to which particular associa- 
tions gave a personal sentiment and value. Steven- 
son was seeking high and low for some flowers — the 



DAVOS AND THE HIGHLANDS 161 

occasion, I think, was the birthday of a girl who 
could never live to see another — he heard of the 
arrival of these. He came, he stated the paramount 
necessity of depriving his friend, and he bore the 
flowers away. The two stories might end here, and 
show Stevenson in rather an unamiable light: their 
point is that neither of his friends ever dreamed of 
resenting his conduct or regarding it with any other 
feeling but affectionate amusement. 

Often in the evening he would turn into the billiard- 
room, and there his talk might be heard at its best. 
A fellow-visitor has given a spirited and sympathetic 
description of him in those days, and adds: "Once 
only do I remember seeing him play a game of bill- 
iards and a truly remarkable performance it was. 
He played with all the fire and dramatic intensity 
that he was apt to put into things. The balls flew 
wildly about, on or off the table as the case might be, 
but seldom indeed ever threatened a pocket or got 
within a hand's-breadth of a cannon. 'What a fine 
thing a game of billiards is,' he remarked to the as- 
tonished onlookers, c — once a year or so!'" 

When he was well, Stevenson had to be out of doors 
a good deal, and spent the time mostly in walks, often 
with his dog for a companion. 

"15/& December 1880. — My dear Mother, — I shall 
tell you about this morning. When I got out with 
Woggs about half-past seven, the sky was low and 
grey; the Tinzenhorn, and the other high peaks were 
covered. It had snowed all night, a fine, soft snow; 
and all the ground had a gloss, almost a burnish, 
from the new coating. The woods were elaborately 



162 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

powdered grey — not a needle but must have had a 
crystal. In the road immediately below me, a long 
train of sack-laden sledges was going by, drawn by 
four horses, with an indescribable smoothness of mo- 
tion, and no sound save that of the bells. On the 
other road, across the river, four or five empty sledges 
were returning towards Platz, some of the drivers 
sitting down, some standing up in their vehicles; they 
glided forward without a jolt or a tremor, not like 
anything real, but like cardboard figures on a toy-like 
theatre. I wonder if you can understand how odd 
this looked." 

Occasionally he joined in skating and, more fre- 
quently, in the tobogganing then newly introduced. 

"Perhaps," he wrote, "the true way to toboggan 
is alone and at night. First comes the tedious climb, 
dragging your instrument behind you. Next a long 
breathing space, alone, with snow and pine woods, 
cold, silent, and solemn to the heart. Then you 
push off; the toboggan fetches way; she begins to 
feel the hill, to glide, to swim, to gallop. In a breath 
you are out from under the pine-trees, and a whole 
heavenful of stars reels and flashes overhead. Then 
comes a vicious effort; for by this time your wooden 
steed is speeding like the wind, and you are spinning 
round a corner, and the whole glittering valley and the 
lights in all the great hotels lie for a moment at your 
feet; and the next you are racing once more in the 
shadow of the night, with close shut teeth and beating 
heart. Yet a little while and you will be landed on 
the highroad by the door of your own hotel. This, 
in an atmosphere tingling with forty degrees of frost, 



DAVOS AND THE HIGHLANDS 163 

in a night made luminous with stars and snow, and 
girt with strange white mountains, teaches the pulse 
an unaccustomed tune, and adds a new excitement to 
the life of man upon his planet." 

A health-resort, from its very conditions, often 
casts upon a visitor shadows of death and bereave- 
ment, but this year the Stevensons were affected 
with the deepest sympathy for a loss that touched 
them nearly; their friend Mrs. Sitwell arrived unex- 
pectedly with her son, who was already in the last 
stages of a swift consumption, and before the end 
came in April, there were but the alternations of 
despair and of hoping against hope until the blow 
fell. 

Shortly afterwards Stevenson and his wife set out 
for France, accompanied only by Woggs, for the boy 
had gone to England to school. They spent several 
weeks, first at Barbizon; then in Paris, whence they 
were driven by drains; and at St. Germain, where 
Stevenson for the first time in his life heard a nightin- 
gale sing, and, having proclaimed that no sounds in 
nature could equal his favourite blackbird, forthwith 
surrendered all prejudice and fell into an ecstasy. 
They found themselves in straits at St. Germain, 
owing to the failure of supplies and the general sus- 
picious appearance of Stevenson's wardrobe; being 
suddenly delivered from insults, they left their land- 
lord, as Mrs. Stevenson alleged, in the belief that he 
had turned from his doors the eccentric son of a 
wealthy English nobleman. 

They reached Edinburgh May 31st, 1881, and 
three days later started with his mother for Pitlochry, 



164 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

where they spent two months at Kinnaird Cottage, 
his father coming to them as often as business per- 
mitted. Louis had written to his parents that for 
country quarters his desiderata were these: "A 
house, not an inn, at least not an hotel; a burn within 
reach; heather and a fir or two. If these can be 
combined, I shall be pretty happy." These requi- 
sites he found, and, indeed, the man would be hard 
to satisfy who asked more of any stream — "a little 
green glen with a burn, a wonderful burn, gold and 
green and snow-white, singing loud and low in differ- 
ent steps of its career, now pouring over miniature 
crags, now fretting itself to death in a maze of rocky 
stairs and pots; never was so sweet a little river. 
Behind, great purple moorlands reaching to Ben 
Vrackie.' , 

In these two months he wrote "Thrawn Janet" 
and the "Merry Men." "The Body Snatcher" be- 
longs to the same time, all three being intended for 
a volume of tales of the supernatural. For " Thrawn 
Janet" Stevenson afterwards claimed that if he had 
never written anything but this tale and the story of 
"Tod Lapraik" in Catriona, he would yet have been 
a writer. It was the outcome of a study of the 
Scotch literature of witchcraft, and is hardly open to 
any other criticism than that which its author himself 
found against it. "Thrawn Janet" has two defects; 
"it is true only historically, true for a hill parish in 
Scotland in old days, not true for mankind and the 
world. Poor Mr. Soulis' faults we may eagerly rec- 
ognise as virtues, and we feel that by his conversion 
he was merely worsened; and this, although the story 



DAVOS AND THE HIGHLANDS 165 

carries me away every time I read it, leaves a painful 
impression on my mind." 

On August 2nd the party left for Braemar; on the 
journey, Stevenson first conceived the family of Dur- 
risdeer and the earlier part of The Master of Ballan- 
trce, though both as yet were nameless, and it was six 
years and more before he began to set any word of it 
on paper. 

At Braemar, having more accommodation, they 
were able to enjoy the society of some of their friends 
— Sidney Colvin, Charles Baxter and others. One 
of the first who arrived was the late Dr. Alexander 
Hay Japp, a new acquaintance, invited to discuss 
Thoreau, and to set Stevenson right upon one or two 
points in his history. Thoreau was duly discussed, 
but before the visitor left, he heard the first eight or 
ten chapters of Treasure Island, then newly written, 
which he carried off in order to offer it to a publisher. 
Stevenson himself has told the history of the book. 
With what gusto he describes beginning the first 
chapter, in words that glow like the beginning of an 
adventure. " On a chill September morning, by the 
cheek of a brisk fire, and the rain drumming on the 
window, I began The Sea Cook, for that was the 
original title." Having first drawn the chart of an 
island (charts being to him "of all books the least 
wearisome to read and the richest in matter"), he 
then, from the names marked at random, constructed 
a story in order to please his schoolboy stepson, who 
asked him to try and write "something interesting"; 
his father, another schoolboy in disguise, took fire at 
this and urged him on, helping him with lists and sug- 



166 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

gestions; unconscious memory came to his aid, and 
Treasure Island was half written. 

Mr. Gosse immediately succeeded Dr. Japp as the 
family visitor, and under his congenial influence the 
story grew at the rate of a chapter a day; before 
Stevenson left Braemar, nineteen chapters had been 
written. As soon as the idea of publication occurred, 
the book had been intended for Messrs. Routledge, 
but by Dr. Japp's good offices it was accepted for 
Young Folks by Mr. Henderson, the proprietor, when 
he saw the opening chapters and heard an outline of 
the story. 

In this summer Stevenson first began to write the 
verses for children, which were afterwards published 
in the Child's Garden. His mother tells how she had 
Miss Kate Greenaway's Birthday Book for Children, 
with verses by Mrs. Sale Barker, then newly pub- 
lished, and how Louis took it up one day, and saying, 
" These are rather nice rhymes, and I don't think 
they would be difficult to do," proceeded to try his 
hand. About fourteen numbers seem to have been 
written in the Highlands, and, apparently, after three 
more had been added, they were then discontinued 
for a time. 

But in the meanwhile the weather grew suddenly 
bad; Stevenson made a hurried flight (in a respirator) 
from Braemar on September 23rd, and after a few 
days in Edinburgh, passed on to London. Here he 
called on his new publisher; "a very amusing visit 
indeed; ordered away by the clerks, who refused 
loudly to believe I had any business; and at last 
received most kindly by Mr. Henderson." 



DAVOS AND THE HIGHLANDS 167 

From London they passed to Paris and so to 
Davos, which they reached on October 18th. This 
year they had taken for the winter a chalet belonging 
to the Hotel Buol, where Symonds was still living; 
they hired a servant of their own, and only occasion- 
ally took meals in the hotel. 

This winter differed considerably from the last. 
Stevenson was in better health, and being accustomed 
to the climate, and also less subject to interruption, 
produced a great deal more work, though, as before, 
a certain proportion of his labours was futile. Treas- 
ure Island was already beginning its serial course, 
with the latter half of it yet unwritten. Fortunately 
the inspiration that had failed the author returned, 
the last fourteen chapters took but a fortnight, and 
at the second wave the book was finished as easily as 
it was begun. It appeared under the signature of 
" Captain George North," and ran an obscure career 
in the pages of its magazine from October to Janu- 
ary, openly mocked at by more than one indignant 
reader. But it did not make its appearance as a 
book till nearly two years later. 

In January Stevenson gives an irresistible descrip- 
tion of himself: U I dawdle on the balcony, read and 
write, and have fits of conscience and indigestion. 
The ingenious human mind, face to face with some- 
thing it downright ought to do, does something else. 
But the relief is temporary." 

Temporary also was the idleness. The Silverado 
Squatters, the record of the circumstances of his 
honeymoon, was written, and no less than five maga- 
zine articles, including the first part of "Talk and 



168 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

Talkers" and the " Gossip on Romance." Still this 
did not satisfy him. He wrote to his mother: "I 
work, work away, and get nothing, or but little done; 
it is slow, slow, slow; but I sit from four to five 
hours at it, and read all the rest of the time for Haz- 
litt." And to Charles Baxter a little later he wrote: 
"I am getting a slow, steady, sluggish stream of ink 
over paper, and shall do better this year than last." 
Before April, he can say: "I have written something 
like thirty-five thousand words since I have been 
here, which shows at least I have been industrious." 

To this time apparently belong the verses called 
"The Celestial Surgeon," which are as characteristic 
of Stevenson as anything he ever wrote. An elo- 
quent modern preacher treating of the deadly sin of 
accidie, "gloom and sloth and irritation," the oppo- 
site of "the vertue that is called fortitude or strength," 
quotes these "graceful, noble lines" at length, and 
says, " Surely no poet of the present day, and none, 
perhaps, since Dante, has so truly told of the inner 
character of accidie, or touched more skilfully the 
secret of its sinfulness." 

Housekeeping was a burden and a doubtful econ- 
omy, but the chalet in other respects was a great 
success. For one thing, it got the sun an hour 
sooner, and kept it an hour later, than the hotels; 
for another, it provided its master with a spot where 
he was at liberty to create and develop for himself 
the amusement which pleased him best of all — the 
game of war. Deeds of arms would always raise a 
thrill in his breast, but so far as I know, there was no 
outward sign of this interest in warfare or strategy 



DAVOS AND THE HIGHLANDS 169 

during his youth or early manhood. In December 
1878 he wrote from the Sabile Club: "I am in such 
glee about Peiwar, Lord Roberts's victory over the 
Afghans. I declared yesterday I was going to add 
the name to mine, and be Mr. Peiwar Stevenson for 
the future." In October 1880, an old general who 
was a friend of the family came to see him in London, 
and brought as a present Sir Edward Hamley's 
Operations of War. R. A. M. Stevenson was there 
at the time, and both cousins were transported with 
enthusiasm. " I am drowned in it a thousand fathom 
deep," wrote Louis, "and e O that I had been a 
soldier' is still my cry." He had never made any 
affectation of abandoning a pursuit he was supposed 
to have outgrown. He clung to the colouring of 
prints and to childish paintings long after most boys 
of his age have given up the diversions of the nursery. 
A large part of the winter of 1877 he spent in building 
with toy-bricks in his room at Heriot Row, and re- 
gretted that he had not been an architect. Steven- 
son, deterred by no false shame, always extracted 
from toys much of the zest of reality, and raised their 
employment almost to the intensity of active life. 
And now, beginning to help his schoolboy with 
games, he became absorbed in the pursuit, and de- 
veloped a Kriegspiel of his own, adapted to the con- 
ditions under which, of necessity, he played. But his 
enthusiasm and the thoroughness and ingenuity he 
exhibited are best described in the account given 
by his adversary, Mr. Lloyd Osbourne — 

" The abiding spirit of the child in him was seldom 
shown in more lively fashion than during those days 



170 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

of exile at Davos, where he brought a boy's eagerness, 
a man's intellect, a novelist's imagination, into the 
varied business of my holiday hours; the printing- 
press, the toy-theatre, the tin soldiers, all engaged 
his attention. Of these, however, the tin soldiers 
most took his fancy; and the war game was con- 
stantly improved and elaborated, until, from a few 
hours, a 'war' took weeks to play, and the critical 
operations in the attic monopolised half our thoughts. 
This attic was a most chilly and dismal spot, reached 
by a crazy ladder, and unlit save for a single frosted 
window; so low at the eaves and so dark that we 
could seldom stand upright, nor see without a candle. 
Upon the attic floor a map was roughly drawn in 
chalks of different colours, with mountains, rivers, 
towns, bridges and roads of two classes. Here we 
would play by the hour, with tingling fingers and 
stiffening knees, and an intentness, zest, and excite- 
ment that I shall never forget. The mimic battalions 
marched and counter-marched, changed by measured 
evolutions from column formation into line, with 
cavalry screens in front and massed supports behind 
in the most approved military fashion of to-day. It 
was war in miniature, even to the making and de- 
struction of bridges, the intrenching of camps; good 
and bad weather, with corresponding influence on the 
roads; siege and horse artillery, proportionately slow, 
as compared to the speed of unimpeded foot, and pro- 
portionately expensive in the upkeep; and an exacting 
commissariat added the last touch of verisimilitude. 
The strength of the enemy in any given spot could 
only be ascertained according to strictly defined reg- 



DAVOS AND THE HIGHLANDS 171 

ulations, and an attempt was even made to mark cer- 
tain districts as unhealthy and to settle by the haz- 
ard of the dice-box the losses incurred by all troops 
passing through them. 

During one war Stevenson chronicled the opera- 
tions in a series of extracts from the Glendarule Times 
and the Yallobally Record, until the editor of the lat- 
ter sheet was hanged by order of General Osbourne 
and its place supplied by the less offensive Herald. 

Year after year, he reverted to the game, and even 
in Samoa there was a campaign room with the map 
coloured on the floor, although the painful realities of 
actual warfare, either present or imminent, occupied 
all our thoughts for the closing period of Stevenson's 
life. 

But, busy as he was this winter, he had time not 
only for this game, but also, turning aside to help 
young Osbourne with his printing, he first wrote 
verses for the toy-press, and then, getting hold of a 
bit of rough wood, began to design and cut illustra- 
tions for his test, or in some cases to create pictures 
which a text must elucidate. 

In February, 1882, he sent to his parents "two 
woodcuts of my own cutting; they are moral em- 
blems; one represents ' anger,' and the other c pride 
scorning poverty.' They will appear among others, 
accompanied by verses, in mynew work published by 
S. L. Osbourne. If my father does not enjoy these, 
he is no true man." And to his mother: "Wood- 
engraving has suddenly drave between me and the 
sun. I dote on wood-engraving. I'm a made man 
for life. I've an amusement at last." 



172 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

Of these blocks about two dozen in all were cut, 
most of them by Stevenson's own hands, though the 
elephant, at any rate, was due to his wife, and "the 
sacred ibis in the distance" was merely the result of 
an accident turned to advantage. He had in his 
boyhood received a few lessons in drawing as a po- 
lite accomplishment: later he found great difficulty 
in the mechanical work of his original profession, 
in which, of course, he had been specially trained. 
Thus, in 1868, he wrote to his mother, "It is awful 
how slowly I draw, and how ill." Barbizon seemed 
to rouse in him no tendency to express himself in 
line or colour, and it was not till he was alone at 
Monastier in 1878, that he made for his own pleas- 
ure such sketches as any grown man with no technical 
education might attempt. 

In April again the family quitted the Alps, but this 
year with welcome news. "We now leave Davos 
for good, I trust, Dr. Ruedi giving me leave to live 
in France, fifteen miles as the crow flies from the sea, 
and if possible near a fir wood. This is a great bles- 
sing: I hope I am grateful. " 

They crossed the Channel with little delay; Louis 
stayed first at Weybridge, and then at Burford 
Bridge, where he renewed his friendship with George 
Meredith. By May 20th he was in Edinburgh, and 
there spent most of June, though he made a week's 
expedition with his father to Lochearnhead, hard by 
the Braes of Balquhidder. Here he made inquiries 
about the Appin murder, perpetrated only forty miles 
away, and was successful in finding some local tradi- 
tions about the murderer still extant. 



DAVOS AND THE HIGHLANDS 173 

The flow of work at the beginning of the year was 
followed by a long period of unproductiveness after 
he returned to this country. He had an article in 
each number of the Comhill from April to August, 
but, except the second part of "Talk and Talkers," 
these had been written at Davos. After this his 
connection with the magazine came to an end. Du- 
ring the past seven years its readers had grown ac- 
customed to look eagerly every month in hope of 
finding an article by R. L. S., and all its rivals have, 
by comparison, ever since seemed conventional and 
dull. 

On June 26th, the family went to the manse of 
Stobo, in Peeblesshire for the summer. But the 
weather was bad, the house shut in by trees, and the 
result most unbeneficial. In a fortnight Louis was 
ordered away, went to London to consult Dr. Andrew 
Clark, and in accordance with his advice started on 
July 22nd for Speyside in the company of Sidney 
Colvin. The rest of the family soon joined him at 
Kingussie, and here again by a burn — "the golden 
burn that pours and sulks," he spent the last entire 
month he ever passed in Scotland. Having gone to 
France to write about Edinburgh, in the Highlands 
he turned again to France, and now wrote most of the 
Treasure of Franchard. The weather again did its 
worst; he had an invitation to meet Cluny Macpher- 
son, and was eagerly looking forward to a talk about 
the Highlands. But a hemorrhage intervened, Ste- 
venson had to leave in haste, and by September 9th 
he was in London, again asking the advice of Dr. 
Clark. The opinion was so far favourable that 



174 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

there was no need to return to Davos, which disagreed 
with Mrs. Stevenson, and of which they were both 
heartily tired. They were thus at liberty to seek a 
home in some more congenial spot. 



CHAPTER X 

THE RIVIERA— 1882-84 

"Happy (said I), I was only happy once, that was at Hyeres; 
it came to end from a variety of reasons, decline of health, change 
of place, increase of money, age with his stealing steps; since 
then, as before then, I know not what it means." — Letters, 
iii. 288. 

A CCORDINGLY about the middle of Septem- 
r\ ber Stevenson started for the south of France, 
and, since he was unfit to go alone, and his 
wife was too ill to undertake the journey, he started 
in the charge and company of his cousin, R. A. M. 
Stevenson. Their object was to discover some place 
suitable for both husband and wife, possessing more 
of the advantages of a town and fewer of the draw- 
backs of a health-resort than the Alpine valley from 
which they were now finally released. Paris was left 
without delay, and Montpellier was next tried and re- 
jected, but not until Louis had a slight hemorrhage. 
He wrote to his wife: " I spent a very pleasant after- 
noon in the doctor's consulting-room among the curi- 
ous, meridional peasants, who quarrelled and told 
their complaints. I made myself very popular there, 
I don't know how." 

His companion had to return home, and Louis 
made his way to Marseilles, where, a few days later, 
on October nth, he was joined by his wife. 

17s 



176 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

No time was wasted; within three days a house 
that seemed all they could desire was found and 
taken. It was a commodious maison de campagne 
with a large garden, situated about five miles from 
Marseilles, with such facilities of communication with 
the city as a considerable suburb ensures. "In a 
lovely spot, among lovely wooded and cliffy hills — 
most mountainous in line — far lovelier to my eye 
than any Alps." 

In another week they were installed in Campagne 
Defli, and had sent for such property as they needed. 
But whether the house, or the neighbourhood, or the 
season was unhealthy, St. Marcel proved a most 
unfortunate choice. Stevenson was never well there, 
and never for more than three or four days at a time 
capable of any work. He had several slight hemorr- 
hages and mended very slowly. By Christmas he 
wrote: "I had to give up wood-engraving, chess, 
latterly even Patience, and could read almost nothing 
but newspapers. It was dull but necessary. I seem 
hopelessly hide-bound, as you see; nothing comes 
out of me but chips." 

At the end of the year an epidemic of fever broke 
out in St. Marcel, and he found himself so unwell, 
that in desperation he went to Nice lest he should 
become too ill to move. They were unprepared for 
the move, and his wife stayed behind until they could 
obtain further supplies. In the meantime telegrams 
and letters went astray, and at the end of a week 
Mrs. Stevenson arrived at Nice quite distraught. 
She had received no news whatever of her husband, 
having telegraphed in all directions for three days in 



THE RIVIERA 177 

vain, and had been assured by every one that he 
must have had a fresh hemorrhage, have left the train 
at some wayside station, and there died and been 
buried. 

In the meantime all went well, but it was obviously 
impossible for Stevenson to think of returning to St. 
Marcel; by the middle of February 1883 they got 
the Campagne Defli off their hands, and were at 
liberty to seek a fresh settlement. After a short 
visit to Marseilles, they went to a hotel at Hyeres, 
and there by the end of March were once more estab- 
lished in a house of their own — Chalet La Solitude. 
It was situated just above the town, on a slope of 
the hill on which the castle stands, commanding a 
view of Lest Oiseaux and the lies d'Or; a cottage 
scarce as large as the Davos chalet, "with 'a garden 
like a fairy-story and a view like a classical land- 
scape." 

Here for a year, or, to be strictly accurate, for a 
little more than nine months, Stevenson was to find 
happiness, a greater happiness than ever came to 
him again, except perhaps at moments in his exile. 
Hardly anything seemed wanting; his wife was al- 
ways able to be with him, and he had, besides, the 
company of his stepson, in which he delighted. There 
was the affectionate intercourse with his parents, 
clouded only by the gradual failure in his father's 
spirits; there was the correspondence with his friends; 
already in March he had been able to welcome Sidney 
Colvin as the first of his visitors; and, not least, he 
found a measure of health once more and a renewed 
capacity for employing his increased skill. 



1 78 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

Of the first of these elements in his happiness he 
wrote to his mother in 1884: "My wife is in pretty 
good feather; I love her better than ever and admire 
her more; and I cannot think what I have done to 
deserve so good a gift. This sudden remark came 
out of my pen; it is not like me; but in case you did 
not know, I may as well tell you, that my marriage 
has been the most successful in the world. I say so, 
and being the child of my parents, I can speak with 
knowledge. She is everything to me; wife, brother, 
sister, daughter and dear companion; and I would 
not change to get a goddess or a saint. So far, 
after four years of matrimony." And of his delight 
in his surroundings he said in 1883: "This house 
and garden of ours still seem to go between us 
and our wits." Their material comfort was further 
increased in May, when Valentine Roch entered their 
service, an extremely clever and capable French 
girl, who remained with them for six years, and 
even accompanied them on their first cruise in the 
Pacific. 

For a period of nearly eight months he had been 
unable to earn any money or to finish any work, and 
it was therefore with the greatest delight that in the 
beginning of May he received an offer from Messrs. 
Cassell for the book-rights of Treasure Island in ad- 
vance. "How much do you suppose? I believe it 
would be an excellent jest to keep the answer till my 
next letter. For two cents I would do so. Shall I ? 
Anyway, I'll turn the page first. No — well, a hun- 
dred pounds, all alive, O! A hundred jingling, tin- 
gling, golden, minted quid. Is not this wonderful?" 



THE RIVIERA 179 

. . . "It is dreadful to be a great, big man, and not 
to be able to buy bread." 

Already, before he reached La Solitude, his en- 
forced leisure had come to an end. Verse writing 
with him was almost always a resource of illness or 
of convalescence, and he now took advantage of his 
recovery to increase the poems of childhood (for 
which his first name was Penny Whistles), until they 
amounted to some eight-and-forty numbers. Now, 
also, in answer to an application from R. W. Gilder, 
the editor of the Century Magazine, The Silverado 
Squatters was finished and despatched to New York, 
and so began his first important connection with 
any of the American publishers who were afterwards 
to prove so lucrative to him. Of course, like others, 
he had suffered at the hands of persons who had not 
only appropriated his books without licence, but, 
even, a less usual outrage, had wantonly misspelt his 
name. "I saw my name advertised in a number of 
the Critic as the work of one R. L. Stephenson; 
and, I own, I boiled. It is so easy to know the name 
of the man whose book you have stolen; for there it 
is, at full length, on the title-page of your booty. 
But no, damn him, not he ! He calls me Stephenson.'' 

The ground was now clear before him, and on 
April 10th he set to work once more from the begin- 
ning upon Prince Otto, which had been begun in Cali- 
fornia in its present form some three years before. 
Ten days later he wrote: "I am up to the waist in a 
story; a kind of one volume novel; how do they ever 
puff them out into three ? Lots of things happen in 
this thing of mine, and one column will swallow it 



180 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

without a strain." At first all went swimmingly. By 
May 5th — in five-and-twenty days — he had drafted 
fifteen chapters. But there was a stumbling-block 
in his path — he had yet to reckon with his women 
characters. When he came to the scenes where the 
intervention of the Countess von Rosen is described, 
his resources were taxed to their utmost, and when 
the battle went against him, he renewed his attack 
again and again. Seven times was the fifteenth 
chapter rewritten, and it was only the eighth version 
which finally was suffered to pass. 

In June he went for a week to Marseilles, and on 
July 1st left for Royat. The latter visit was most 
successful, as his parents joined the party and there 
spent several weeks, but early in September Louis and 
his wife were back at La Solitude. Treasure Island 
had been prepared for press, and was already in the 
hands of the printers with the sole exception of the 
chart out of which the story had grown. This, hav- 
ing been accidentally mislai'd, had now to be recon- 
structed from the text, and was being drawn in the 
Stevensons' office in Edinburgh. 

On September 19th Stevenson heard of the death of 
his old friend Walter Ferrier, who had long been in 
bad health, but was not supposed to be in any imme- 
diate danger. The record of their friendship is con- 
tained in the essay called l Old Mortality/ which was 
written this winter; part of the letter has already 
been quoted which Stevenson wrote to Henley at this 
time upon hearing of their common loss, a letter which 
is, moreover, given at length in Sir Sidney Colvin's 
collection. Hence there is no occasion to say more 



THE RIVIERA 181 

here than that this was the first breach death had 
made in the inner circle of Stevenson's friends. 

That very spring he had written in a letter of con- 
solation, " I am like a blind man in speaking of these 
things, for I have never known what mourning is, and 
the state of my health permits me to hope that I shall 
carry this good fortune unbroken to the grave." The 
hope was not to be fulfilled, but never again, with the 
exception of his father and of Fleeming Jenkin, did 
any loss so nearly affect him as the death of Walter 
Ferrier. 

All through the autumn his house continued to 
afford him fresh satisfaction. "My address is still 
the same," he writes to Will Low, "and I live in a 
most sweet corner of the universe, sea and fine hills 
before me, and a rich variegated plain; and at my 
back a craggy hill, loaded with vast feudal ruins. I 
am very quiet; a person passing by my door half 
startles me; but I enjoy the most aromatic airs, and 
at night the most wonderful view into a moonlit 
garden. By day this garden fades into nothing, over- 
powered by its surroundings and the luminous dis- 
tance; but at night, and when the moon is out, that 
garden, the arbour, the flight of stairs that mount 
the artificial hillock, the plumed blue gum-trees that 
hang trembling, become the very skirts of Paradise. 
Angels I know frequent it; and it thrills all night 
with the flutes of silence." 

Treasure Island was published as a book in the 
end of November, when Stevenson obtained his first 
popular success. Its reception reads like a fairy-tale. 
Statesmen and judges and all sorts of staid and sober 



182 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

men became boys once more, sitting up long after 
bedtime to read their new book. The story goes that 
Mr. Gladstone got a glimpse of it at Lord Rosebery's 
house, and spent the next day hunting over London 
for a second-hand copy. The editor of the Saturday 
Review, the superior, cynical "Saturday" of old days, 
wrote excitedly to say that he thought Treasure 
Island was the best book that had appeared since 
Robinson Crusoe; and James Payn, who, if not a 
great novelist himself, yet held an undisputed posi- 
tion among novelists and critics, sent a note hardly 
less enthusiastic. Mr. Andrew Lang spent over it 
"several hours of unmingled bliss." "This is the 
kind of stuff a fellow wants. I don't know, except 
Tom Sawyer and the Odyssey, that I ever liked any 
romance so well." It was translated and pirated in 
all directions, appearing within a couple of years as 
a feuilleton even in Greek and Spanish papers. For 
all this, it brought in no great emolument, for du- 
ring the first year no more than five thousand six 
hundred copies were sold in this country. 

Its author, at all events, did not lose his head or 
over-estimate his merits. Writing to his parents he 
says: "This gives one strange thoughts of how very 
bad the common run of books must be; and generally 
all the books that the wiseacres think too bad to print 
are the very ones that bring me praise and pudding." 

One link with the past had snapped, one friendship 
had vanished, and Stevenson was looking forward all 
the more eagerly to seeing two of his oldest friends, 
Henley and Charles Baxter, who were coming out to 
spend a long-promised holiday with him. The New 



THE RIVIERA 183 

Year came, his friends arrived at Hyeres, and for 
about a week he enjoyed the delights to which he 
had looked forward. But the house was too small for 
their reception, and Stevenson proposed that they 
should all go away together to some other place, that 
he might share with them the benefit of a change. 
Accordingly the party of four went to Nice, and there 
almost at once Stevenson took cold. At first it 
seemed slight, and his friends who were due to re- 
turn home went away without thought of anxiety. 
The cold, however, resulted in congestion of the 
lungs, and suddenly the situation became grave. 
"At a consultation of doctors," Mrs. Stevenson says, 
"I was told there was no hope, and I had better 
send for some member of the family to be with me 
at the end. Bob Stevenson came, and I can never 
be grateful enough for what he did for me then. He 
helped me to nurse Louis, and he kept me from 
despair as I believe no one else could have done; he 
inspired me with hope when there seemed no hope." 

Very slowly he grew better; it was some time 
before he was out of danger, and a month before he 
was able to set foot outside the house; but at last 
they returned to La Solitude. 

The illness, however, marked the beginning of a 
new and proctracted period of ill-health, which lasted 
with but little intermission until he had left Europe. 

Miss Ferrier, his friend's sister, came out at this 
time and stayed with them until their return to Eng- 
land, proving an unfailing support to them in their 
increasing troubles. For in the first week in May 
Stevenson was attacked with the most violent and 



184 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

dangerous hemorrhage he ever experienced. It oc- 
curred late at night, but in a moment his wife was 
by his side. Being choked with the flow of blood 
and unable to speak, he made signs to her for a paper 
and pencil, and wrote in a neat firm hand, " Don't be 
frightened; if this is death, it is an easy one." Mrs. 
Stevenson had always a small bottle of ergotin and 
a minim glass in readiness; these she brought in 
order to administer the prescribed quantity. Seeing 
her alarm, he took the bottle and glass away from 
her, measured the dose correctly with a perfectly 
steady hand, and gave the things back to her with 
a reassuring smile. 

Recovery was very slow and attended by numerous 
complications, less dangerous, but ever more painful 
than the original malady. The dust of street refuse 
gave him Egyptian ophthalmia, and sciatica descend- 
ing upon him caused him the more pain, as he was 
suffering already from restlessness. The hemorrhage 
was not yet healed, and we now hear for the first time 
of the injunctions to absolute silence, orders patiently 
obeyed, distasteful as they were. In silence and the 
dark, and in acute suffering, he was still cheery and 
undaunted. When the ophthalmia began and the 
doctor first announced his diagnosis, Mrs. Stevenson 
felt that it was more than anyone could be expected to 
bear, and went into another room, and there, in her 
own phrase, " sat and gloomed." Louis rang his bell 
and she went to him, saying, in the bitterness of her 
spirit, as she entered the room, " Well, I suppose that 
this is the very best thing that could have happened!" 
"Why, how odd!" wrote Louis on a piece of paper, 



THE RIVIERA 185 

"I was just going to say those very words." When 
darkness fell upon him and silence was imposed, 
and his right arm was in a sling on account of the 
hemorrhage, his wife used to amuse him for part of 
the day by making up tales, some of which they after- 
wards used in the Dynamiter', when these were at an 
end, he continued the Child 1 s Garden, writing down 
the new verses for himself in the dim light with his 
left hand. 

In a few days Mrs. Stevenson was able to write to 
her mother-in-law: — 

l< [iSth May iSS^.]— . . . The doctor says, " Keep 
him alive till he is forty, and then although a winged 
bird, he may live to ninety. " But between now and 
forty he must live as though he were walking on eggs, 
and for the next two years, no matter how well he 
feels, he must live the life of an invalid. He must 
be perfectly tranquil, trouble about nothing, have no 
shocks or surprises, not even pleasant ones; must not 
eat too much, drink too much, laugh too much; may 
write a little, but not too much; talk very little, and 
walk no more than can be helped." 

His recovery was steady and satisfactory; with 
great caution and by the aid of a courier the party 
made their way to Royat without mishap early in 
June. Thence he made up his mind to return to 
England in order to obtain a final medical opinion 
upon his health and prospects. The only course be- 
fore him apparently was to "live the life of a delicate 
girl" until he was forty. But uncongenial as this 
seemed, his spirits were as high as ever, and he signed 



186 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

the letter with a string of names worthy of Bunyan's 
own invention — "I am, yours, 

Mr. Muddler. 

Mr. Addlehead. 

Mr. Wandering Butterwits. 

Mr. Shiftless Inconsistency. 

Sir Indecision Contentment. ,, 

The journey was safely accomplished and Steven- 
son and his wife reached England on the ist of July, 
the day before the first representation on the London 
stage of Deacon Brodie. 










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CHAPTER XI 
BOURNEMOUTH— 1884-87 

"This is the study where a smiling God 
Beholds each day my stage of labour trod, 
And smiles and praises, and I hear him say: 
'The day is brief; be diligent in play.' " 

R. L. S. 

THE next three years Stevenson was to spend in 
England — the only time he was ever resident 
in this country — and then Europe was to see 
him no more. At first sight the chronicle of this 
time would seem to be more full of interest than any 
other period of his life. Treasure Island, his "first 
book," had just been given to the world; the year 
after his return A ChiWs Garden of Verses and Prince 
Otto were published, and Jekyll and Hyde and Kid- 
napped appeared in the following year. To have 
written almost any one of these brilliant yet widely 
dissimilar books would be to challenge the attention 
of the most distinguished contemporary men of let- 
ters; and to meet Stevenson at this time was instantly 
to acknowledge the quality and charm of the man and 
the strong fascination of his talk. For the whole of 
the period he made his home at Bournemouth, within 
easy reach of London visitors; and in London itself 
Sidney Colvin (who had now become Keeper of Prints 
at the British Museum) not only had a house always 
open to him, but delighted to bring together those 

187 



188 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

who by their own powers were best fitted to appreci- 
ate his society. 

Yet the reality is disappointing. To produce brill- 
iant writings it is not necessary at the time to live an 
exciting or even a very full life, and Stevenson's health 
deprived him more and more of the ordinary inci- 
dents which happen to most men in their daily 
course. Looking back on this period in after days, 
he cries out: "Remember the pallid brute that lived 
in Skerryvore like a weevil in a biscuit." Nearly all 
the time which was not devoted to contending with 
illness was taken up with his work, and as he rarely 
left home without returning in a more or less disabled 
condition, he stayed in his own house and led the 
most retired of lives. Even there it was no uncom- 
mon experience for a visitor who had come to Bourne- 
mouth specially to see him, to find himself put to the 
door, either on the ground of having a cold, to the 
contagion of which it was unsafe for Stevenson to 
be exposed, or because his host was already too ill to 
receive him. 

Having passed a few days in a hotel at Richmond, 
Stevenson and his wife went down to Bournemouth, 
where Lloyd Osbourne had for some months past 
been at school. After staying at a hotel, and trying 
first one and then another set of lodgings on the West 
Cliff, at the end of October they migrated into a 
furnished house in Branksome Park. The doctors 
whom he consulted were equally divided in their 
opinions, two saying it would be safe for him to stay 
in this country, while two advised him to go abroad ; 
and in the end he yielded only to the desire to be 



BOURNEMOUTH 189 

near his father, who, though still at work, was evi- 
dently failing fast. 

Meanwhile the first two months at Bournemouth 
were spent chiefly in the company of W. E. Henley, 
and were devoted to collaboration over two new plays. 
The reception of Deacon Brodie had been sufficiently 
promising to serve as an incentive to write a piece 
which should be a complete success, and so to grasp 
some of the rewards which now seemed within reach 
of the authors. They had never affected to disregard 
the fact that in this country the prizes of the drama- 
tist are out of all proportion to the payment of the 
man of letters, and already in 1883 Stevenson had 
written to his father: "The theatre is the gold mine; 
and on that I must keep an eye." Now that they 
were again able to meet, and to be constantly together, 
the friends embarked upon some of the schemes they 
had projected long ago, and no doubt had talked over 
at Nice at the beginning of the year. By October 
the drafts of Beau Austin and Admiral Guinea were 
completed and set up in type; and in the following 
spring, at the suggestion of (Sir) Beerbohm Tree, the 
two collaborators again set to work and produced 
their English version of Macaire. These were to 
have been but the beginning of their labours, but 
more necessary work intervened, and the plays were 
never resumed. 

Meanwhile, on receiving an application from the 
proprietor of the Pall Mall Gazette for a Christmas 
story, Stevenson attempted to produce a new tale for 
the occasion. It proved, however, what, in the slang 
of the studio, he called a "machine," and "Mark- 



i 9 o LIFE OF STEVENSON 

heim," which was now ready, being too short, as a 
last resource he bethought himself of "The Body 
Snatcher," one of the "tales of horror " written at 
Pitlochry in 1881, and then "laid aside in a justifiable 
disgust." It was not one of his greater achievements, 
and would probably have excited little comment, had 
it not been for the gruesome and unauthorised 
methods of advertisement. 

By the end of January so successful had the win- 
ter been that Thomas Stevenson bought a house at 
Bournemouth as a present for his daughter-in-law. 
Its name was forthwith changed to Skerryvore in 
commemoration of the most beautiful and the most 
difficult to build of all the lighthouses erected by the 
family. It was no great distance from where they 
were already living: a modern brick house, closely 
covered with ivy; and from the top windows it was 
possible to catch a glimpse of the sea. There was 
half an acre of ground very charmingly arranged, 
running down from the lawn at the back, past 
a bank of heather, into a chine or small ravine 
full of rhododendrons, and at the bottom a tiny 
stream. 

Wanderer as he was, and still gave the impression 
of being, Stevenson entered into his new property 
with a keenness of delight that must have amused 
those of his friends who remembered his former 
disparagement of all household possessions. "Our 
drawing-room is now a place so beautiful that it's 
like eating to sit in it. No other room is so lovely 
in the world; there I sit like an old Irish beggarman's 
cast-off bauchle in a palace throne-room. Incon- 



BOURNEMOUTH 191 

gruity never went so far; I blush for the figure I 
cut in such a bower." 

The large dovecot is commemorated in Under- 
woods', the garden was an endless pleasure to Mrs. 
Stevenson, and long having been the domain of 
"Boguey" in his life-time, became at last his resting- 
place. Having been sent to hospital to recover from 
wounds received in battle, he broke loose, in his 
maimed state attacked another dog more powerful 
than himself, and so perished. His master and mis- 
tress were inconsolable, and never, even in Samoa, 
could bring themselves to allow any successor. 

I have already referred to the easy access to 
Bournemouth, which was, of course, a prime consid- 
eration with his parents. But Stevenson's friends 
had seen little of him for several years past, so in 
this also there was a welcome change from Hyeres. 
Nearly all the old and tried companions whom I have 
mentioned came to Skerry vore during these years: 
R. A. M. Stevenson and his wife, and his sister, Mrs. 
de Mattos, and her children; Miss Ferrier, Charles 
Baxter, Fleeming Jenkin and Mrs. Jenkin, Sidney 
Colvin, and W. E. Henley all paid more or less fre- 
quent visits. Among the new-comers were Mr. Sar- 
gent, who twice came to paint his host's portrait; 
Mr. James Sully, an old friend at the Savile Club; 
Mr. William Archer, who owed his first coming to 
his severe but inspiring analysis of Stevenson, and re- 
mained as one of the most valued of his critics and ap- 
preciative of his friends; and, last and most welcome 
of the admissions into the inmost circle, his ve0 
dear friend, Mr. Henry James. 



192 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

One of the most frequent visitors was R. A. M. 
Stevenson, who had, after some time, decided to give 
up the thankless task of producing pictures for the 
public which were not those he wanted to paint, and 
to use his technical knowledge and matchless powers 
of exposition in the criticism of art. That other art 
of writing, however, which Louis had spent his life 
in learning, could not be mastered in a day for the 
purposes of journalism even by so brilliant a talker as 
Bob, and it fell to Louis and Henley to give him many 
hints and put him through an apprenticeship in the 
technical part of the new profession in which he so 
rapidly made his mark. 

Nor were the residents of Bournemouth to be over- 
looked, although (besides Dr. Scott, to whom Under- 
woods was chiefly dedicated, and Mrs. Boodle and 
her daughter, the " Gamekeeper " of the Letters) close 
friendship was confined to two families — Sir Henry 
Taylor and his wife and daughters, and Sir Percy 
and Lady Shelley. Sir Percy, the son of the poet, 
was devoted to yachting and the theatre (especially 
melodrama), and his genial, kindly nature, in which 
shrewdness and simplicity were almost attractively 
blended, endeared him to his new as to all his old 
friends, while Lady Shelley, no less warm-hearted, 
took the greatest fancy to Louis, and discovering in 
him a close likeness to her renowned father-in-law, 
she forthwith claimed him as her son. 

But it was the Taylors with whom he lived in more 
intimate relations in spite of the impression he seems 
here again to have produced of a being wholly trans- 
itory and detached, a bird of passage resting in his 



BOURNEMOUTH 193 

flight from some strange source to regions yet more 
unknown. Sir Henry indeed died almost before the 
friendship had commenced, but Lady Taylor and her 
daughters continued to live at Bournemouth until 
long after Skerry vore was transferred to other hands. 

But before Sir Henry Taylor passed away, Steven- 
son had suffered a more unexpected and a heavier 
blow in the death of his friend Fleeming Jenkin on 
June 12, 1885. Only once again in his life was he to 
lose one very near to him, and the subsequent task of 
writing his friend's life not only raised his great ad- 
miration but even deepened the regret for his loss. 

To some of his friends in these days, and chiefly to 
Miss Una Taylor, Mrs. Jenkin, W. E. Henley, and his 
cousin Bob, he owed the revival of his interest in 
music, which now laid greater hold upon him than 
ever before. He began to learn the piano, though he 
never reached even a moderate degree of skill; he 
flung himself with the greatest zeal into the mysteries 
of composition, wherein it is but honest to say that he 
failed to master the rudiments. "Books are of no 
use," he says; "they tell you how to write in four 
parts, and that cannot be done by man. Or do you 
know a book that really tells a fellow? I suppose 
people are expected to have ears. To my ear a 
fourth is delicious, and consecutive fifths the music of 
the spheres. As for hidden fifths, those who pre- 
tend to dislike 'em I can never acquit of affectation. 
Besides (this in your ear) there is nothing else in 
music; I know; I have tried to write four parts." 

His delight and eagerness were enhanced rather 
than decreased by difficulties, and in a period of his 



i 9 4 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

life when nearly all pleasures were taken away from 
him, he was able at least to sit at the piano and 
create for the ear of his imagination those heavenly 
joys it is the prerogative of music to bestow. 

Besides enjoying the company of his friends, he 
made good use of his few other opportunities. Since 
at Bournemouth his health hardly ever allowed him 
to pass beyond the gate of Skerryvore, the chance 
seldom presented itself to him of meeting men of any 
other class whose lives lay outside his own, but those 
who fell in his way received unusual attention at his 
hands, more especially if they possessed originality 
or any independence of character. Thus, the barber 
that came to cut his hair, the picture-framer, the 
"vet" who attended "Boguey," each in their differ- 
ent way were originals to a man whose life was so 
secluded; their coming was welcomed, they invari- 
ably stayed to meals, and, sooner or later, told the 
story of their lives. 

Such was his own life, and such were his surround- 
ings at this period; and yet to leave the picture 
without a word of warning would be wholly to mis- 
represent Stevenson. A popular novelist, toiling in- 
cessantly at his writing, and confined by ill-health 
almost entirely within the walls of a suburban villa 
at an English watering-place, is about as dreary a 
figure as could be formed from the facts. The details 
are as accurate as if they were in a realistic novel, 
and yet the essence is wholly untrue to life. It is 
necessary to insist again and again on the "spirit 
intense and rare," the courage, the vivacity, the rest- 
less intellect ever forming new schemes with un- 



BOURNEMOUTH 195 

ceasing profusion. There are people who might live 
a life of the wildest adventure, of the most picturesque 
diversity, and yet be dull. Stevenson could lie in a 
sickroom for weeks without speaking, and yet de- 
clare truly, as he asserted to W. Archer, "I never 
was bored in my life." When everything else failed, 
and he was entirely incapable of work, he would 
build card-houses, or lie in bed modelling small fig- 
ures of wax or clay, taking the keenest interest in 
either process. On being told that a friend of his 
"has fallen in love with stagnation," from his invalid 
chair he protests that the dream of his life is to be 
"the leader of a great horde of irregular cavalry," 
and his favourite attitude "turning in the saddle to 
look back at my whole command (some five thousand 
strong) following me at the hand-gallop up the road 
out of the burning valley by moonlight." In him at 
least the romantic daydream called out as completely 
the splendid virtues of courage and enterprise and 
resolution as he could ever have displayed them on 
the field of battle. 

In March 1885 A Child's Garden of Verses was 
published at last, after having been set up twice in 
proof. In April Prince Otto began to run in Long- 
man's Magazine, coming out as a book in October, 
and by May More New Arabian Nights appeared. 
Soon after the issue of Prince Otto, Stevenson wrote 
to Henley: "I had yesterday a letter from George 
Meredith, which was one of the events of my life. 
He cottoned (for one thing), though with differences, 
to Otto; cottoned more than my rosiest visions had 
inspired me to hope; said things that (from him) I 



196 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

would blush to quote. " The Meredith letter un- 
fortunately has disappeared, but in another from the 
same source there occur these words: "I have read 
pieces of Prince Otto, admiring the royal manner of 
your cutting away of the novelist's lumber. Straight 
to matter is the secret. Also approvingly your article 
on style. " 

Still, with all this production, and with praise from 
so high a quarter, it must not be supposed that Ste- 
venson's writing as yet brought in any very extrav- 
agant payment. His professional income for this 
year, in fact, was exactly the same as that which he 
had averaged for the three years preceding, and 
amounted to less than four hundred pounds. Nor 
were his receipts materially increased before he 
reached America. 

A subject much in his thoughts at this time was the 
duality of man's nature and the alternation of good 
and evil; and he was for a long while casting about 
for a story to embody this central idea. Out of this 
frame of mind had come the sombre imagination of 
"Markheim," but that was not what he required. 
The true tale still delayed, till suddenly one night 
he had a dream. He awoke, and found himself in 
possession of two, or rather three, of the scenes in the 
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 

Its waking existence, however, was by no means 
without incident. He dreamed these scenes in con- 
siderable detail, including the circumstances of the 
transforming powders, and so vivid was the impres- 
sion that he wrote the story off at a red heat, just as 
it had presented itself to him in his sleep. 



BOURNEMOUTH 197 

He then came downstairs in a fever, read nearly 
half the book aloud, "and then while we were 
gaping, he was away again and busy writing. ,, 
Mrs. Stevenson, however, wrote a detailed criti- 
cism of the story as it then stood, pointing out 
her chief objection — that it was really an allegory, 
whereas he had treated it purely as if it were a 
story. In the first draft Jekyll's nature was bad 
all through, and the Hyde change was worked 
only for the sake of a disguise. She took the 
paper to her husband and left his room. After a 
while his bell rang; on her return she found him 
sitting up in bed (the clinical thermometer in his 
mouth), pointing with a long denunciatory ringer 
to a pile of ashes. He had burned the entire 
draft. Having realised that he had taken the 
wrong point of view, that the tale was an allegory 
and not another "Markheim," he at once des- 
troyed his manuscript, acting not out of pique, but 
from a fear that he might be tempted to make too 
much use of it, and not rewrite the whole from a 
new standpoint. 

It was written again in three days ("I drive on 
with Jekyll: bankruptcy at my heels") ; but the fear 
of losing the story altogether prevented much fur- 
ther criticism. The powder was condemned as too 
material an agency, but this he could not ehminate, 
because in the dream it had made so strong an im- 
pression upon him. 

"The mere physical feat," Mr. Osbourne con- 
tinues, "was tremendous; and instead of harming 
him, it roused and cheered him inexpressibly." Of 



ig8 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

course it must not be supposed that these three days 
represent all the time that Stevenson spent upon the 
story, for after this he was working hard for a month 
or six weeks in bringing it into its present form. 

The manuscript was then offered to Messrs. Long- 
mans for their magazine; and on their judgment the 
decision was taken not to break it up into monthly 
sections, but to issue it as a shilling book in paper 
covers. "The little book was printed," said Mr. 
Charles Longman, "but when it was ready the book- 
stalls were already full of Christmas numbers, etc., 
and the trade would not look at it. We therefore 
withdrew it till after Christmas. In January it was 
launched — not without difficulty. The trade did not 
feel inclined to take it up, till a review appeared in 
the Times calling attention to the story. This gave 
it a start, and in the next six months close on forty 
thousand copies were sold in this country alone." 
Besides the authorised edition in America, the book 
was widely pirated. 

Its success was probably due rather to the moral 
instincts of the public than to any conscious percep- 
tion of the merits of its art. It was read by those 
who never read fiction, it was quoted in pulpits, and 
made the subject of leading articles in religious news- 
papers. But as literature also it was justly received 
with enthusiasm. Even Symonds, though he doubted 
"whether anyone had the right so to scrutinise the 
abysmal depths of personality," admitted, "The art 
is burning and intense"; and the cry of horror and 
pain which he raised was in another sense a tribute 
to its success. " How had you the ilia dura ferro et 



BOURNEMOUTH 199 

are triplici duriora to write Dr. Jekyll ? I know now 
what was meant when you were called a sprite. " 

In his Chapter on Dreams, Stevenson has told his 
readers how the "brownies" suddenly became useful 
in providing him with stories for his books, but in 
spite of this statement it appears that besides Jek- 
yll and Hyde there is only one other plot thus fur- 
nished which he ever actually completed. This was 
" Olalla," which appeared in the Christmas number 
of the Court and Society Review; To Lady Taylor 
he wrote: "The trouble with ' Olalla' is, that it some- 
how sounds false. . . . The odd problem is: What 
makes a story true? 'Markheim' is true; ' Olalla ' 
false; and I don't know why, nor did I feel it while I 
worked at them ; indeed I had more inspiration with 
' Olalla,' as the style shows. I am glad you thought 
that young Spanish woman well dressed; I admire 
the style of it myself, more than is perhaps good for 
me; it is so solidly written. And that again brings 
back (almost with the voice of despair) my unan- 
swerable: Why is it false?" 

Kidnapped was begun in March 1885 as another 
story for boys, and with as little premeditation as 
afterwards sufficed for its sequel. But when once 
the hero had been started upon his voyage, the tale 
was laid aside and not resumed until the following 
January, just after the publication of Jekyll and 
Hyde. 

" In one of my books, and in one only, the charac- 
ters took the bit in their teeth; all at once, they be- 
came detached from the flat paper, they turned their 
backs on me and walked off bodily; and from that 



200 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

time my task was stenographic — it was they who 
spoke, it was they who wrote the remainder of the 
story." 

But within two months Stevenson began to flag, 
and not long after a visit for his father's sake to 
Matlock, where he had made small progress with the 
writing, he decided, at his friend Colvin's suggestion, 
to break off with David's return to Edinburgh and 
leave the tale half told. Mr. Henderson gladly ac- 
cepted the story for Young Folks, where it ran under 
Stevenson's own name from May to July, and was 
then published by Messrs. Cassell & Co. 

The whole took him, as he said, "probably five 
months' actual working; one of these months en- 
tirely over the last chapters, which had to be put 
together without interest or inspiration, almost word 
for word, for I was entirely worked out." But as a 
whole, the author thought it the best and most 
human work he had yet done, and its success was 
immediate with all readers. To mention two in- 
stances only: — Matthew Arnold, who apparently 
knew Stevenson's work little, if at all, before this was. 
at once filled with delight, and we are told that it 
was the last book Lord Iddesleigh was able to read 
with pleasure — "a volume," adds Mr. Lang, "con- 
taining more of the spirit of Scott than any other in 
English fiction." 

The elder Stevenson had for several years, as we 
have seen, been declining in health and spirits, and 
the shadows began to close about his path. In 1885 
he gradually reduced the amount of his work, though 
he still continued his practice, and could not alto- 



BOURNEMOUTH 201 

gether refuse the solicitations, he received to appear as 
a scientific witness before Parliamentary Committees. 

The tenderness of the relation between father and 
son now became pathetic in the extreme. As the 
old man's powers began to fail, he would speak to 
Louis as though he were still a child. When they 
went to the theatre together, and Louis stood up in 
his place, the father put his arm round him, saying: 
"Take care, my dearie, you might fall." At night 
as he kissed his son, he would say reassuringly: 
"You'll see me in the morning, dearie." "It was," 
says his daughter-in-law, "just like a mother with a 
young child." 

It was chiefly in the summers and autumns that 
Louis left Bournemouth, but even then he rarely 
travelled any distance or was absent for any length 
of time. In 1885 he went to London in June, and 
then accompanied his wife on a last visit to Cam- 
bridge to stay with Sidney Colvin, who was now 
resigning his professorship. In August he started for 
Dartmoor, but after meeting Mr. Thomas Hardy and 
his wife at Dorchester, was laid up with a violent 
hemorrhage at Exeter, in the hotel, and was com- 
pelled to remain there for several weeks, before he 
was able to return home. In the following year he 
went to town in June, and again in August, the latter 
time extending his journey to Paris, in the company 
of his wife and W. E. Henley, to see their friends 
Will H. Low and his wife, then, after a long interval, 
revisiting France for the first time. 

Meeting once more in their early haunts, the old 
friends revived many memories. One trivial reminis- 



202 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

cence of this occasion is yet so characteristic of Ste- 
venson, and so illustrates the working of his mind, 
that it may find a place here. The two friends, 
painter and writer, both possessing a fine palate for 
certain wines, had always laughed at one another's 
pretensions to such taste. In 1875 or 1876, soon after 
Mr. Low's marriage, he and his wife had gone to 
dine with Stevenson at the Cafe of the Musee de 
Cluny in the Boulevard St. Michel. Mr. Low hesi- 
tating for a moment in his choice of a wine, Steven- 
son turned to Mrs. Low, and on the spot made up 
and elaborately embellished a story of how her hus- 
band had once gone with him to dine at a restaurant, 
and had tasted and rejected every vintage the estab- 
lishment was able to offer. At last — so the tale ran 
— the proprietor confessed that there was one bottle 
even finer in his cellar, which had lain there forty 
years, but that he was ready to give it up to such a 
master, although it was like surrendering a part of 
his life. A procession was formed, first the pro- 
prietor, then the cellarman, then the waiters of the 
establishment, and they all went down to the cellar 
to get the famous bottle. Back they came in the 
same order with the priceless treasure borne tenderly 
in the arms of the cellarman, a man with a long beard 
down to his waist, who had been so much in the cellar 
that the light made him blink. Slowly and rever- 
ently they approached the table, and then they all 
sighed. The bottle was deliberately and ceremo- 
niously uncorked, and the wine poured into small 
glasses, while the waiters looked on with breathless 
reverence. The two connoisseurs touched glasses 



BOURNEMOUTH 203 

and slowly carried them to their lips. There was ab- 
solute silence. All eyes were upon them, and when 
they drank deeply and expressed their satisfaction, 
the whole establishment heaved a sigh of relief. 

Mrs. Low now reminded Stevenson of this story, 
and he, declaring it was no "story," but an historical 
account of what had actually happened, repeated it 
word for word as he had originally told it. When he 
came to the end, he added, "And the cellarman, 
overcome with emotion, dropped dead." As he said 
these words, he saw by his hearers' faces that this 
was a divergence from the original tale, and added 
quickly, "That about the cellarman is not really 
true!" 

The visit to Paris was most successful, its chief 
event being a visit to Rodin, the sculptor, to whom 
Stevenson was introduced by Henley. He came 
home in what was for him exceptionally good health; 
but returning in October to The Monument — his 
invariable name for Sidney Colvin's house at the 
British Museum — he did not escape so easily. The 
second holiday began delightfully, for it was on this 
occasion that he met some of the most distinguished 
of his elders in the world of letters and of art es- 
pecially, as Sir Sidney Colvin records, Browning, 
Lowell and Burne- Jones. But soon the visitor was 
taken ill, confined to bed, and unable to return home 
until the very end of November, when a succession of 
fogs made the danger of remaining in London greater 
than the risk of any journey. 

By this time he had begun to write the Memoir of 
his friend Jenkin, the only biography which he ever 



2o 4 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

actually carried to an end. A few months later Mrs. 
Jenkin came to Skerryvore to afford him what assis- 
tance he needed, and of his method of dealing with 
the work, she has given a description. 

"I used to go to his room after tea, and tell him 
all I could remember of certain times and circum- 
stances. He would listen intently, every now and 
then checking me while he made a short note, or 
asking me to repeat or amplify what I had said, if 
it had not been quite clear. Next morning I went 
to him again, and he read aloud to me what he had 
written — my two hours of talk compressed into a 
page, and yet, as it seemed to me, all there, all ex- 
pressed. He would make me note what he had 
written word by word, asking me, 'Does this ex- 
press quite exactly what you mean?' Sometimes he 
offered me alternative words, 'Does this express it 
more truly?' If I objected to any sentence as not 
conveying my meaning, he would alter it again and 
again — unwearied in taking pains." 

His life in England led him to take, both in home 
and in foreign politics, a closer interest than he had 
felt before. He was deeply moved during these years 
by two events, though neither in the end led to any 
action on his part, nor even an open declaration of 
his views. These were the death of Gordon and a 
case of boycotting women in Ireland. 

In 1884, he had felt acutely the withdrawal of the 
garrisons from the Soudan. "When I read at Nice 
that Graham was recalled from Suakim after all that 
butchery, I died to politics. I saw that they did not 
regard what I regarded, and regarded what I de- 



BOURNEMOUTH 205 

spised; and I closed my account. If ever I could do 
anything, I suppose I ought to do it; but till that hour 
comes, I will not vex my soul." 

This was no passing wave of sentiment; Gordon's 
fate was laid even more deeply to heart, and one of 
the motives which induced Stevenson to begin his 
letters to the Times upon Samoan affairs, was the 
memory that in 1884, he had stood by in silence while 
a brave man was being deserted and a population, 
dependent for help on the government of this coun- 
try, was handed over to the mercies of barbarism. So 
when he finally came to the point of writing a letter 
to Mr. Gladstone about the Iron Duke, he could 
think of no other signature open to him than " Your 
fellow-criminal in the eyes of God," and forbore. 

But although the passionate indignation and " that 
chastity of honour which felt a stain like a wound" 
were highly characteristic of Stevenson, at the most 
they could have led to nothing more than a series of 
letters to the papers. They might have stirred the 
public conscience, but though Stevenson would have 
been dealing with matters less remote from the knowl- 
edge of his readers, his part in any agitation or pro- 
test would not have differed greatly from his efforts 
in the cause of Samoa. The other project, on the 
contrary, would, if he had been able to carry it out, 
have led to a definite and entire change of the whole 
course of his life. On Nov. 13, 1885, Mr. John 
Curtin had been murdered by a party of moon- 
lighters in his house, Castle Farm, at Castle Island, 
County Kerry. His grown-up sons and daughters 
had shown the greatest courage, and one of the mur- 



206 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

derers had been shot. For this, the family were cut 
off as far as possible from all the necessaries of life, 
and in April, 1887, the boycott still continued. Ste- 
venson, while admitting the wrongs of Ireland, had 
always the most profound regard for the paramount 
claims of the law, and had long been shocked, both 
by the disregard of it in Ireland, and by the callous 
indifference of the English to the needs of those en- 
gaged in its support. He now pitched upon the case 
of the Curtin family, as a concrete instance in which 
it behoved England to do her duty, and since no 
one else was forthcoming for the task, he prepared 
to offer himself as an agent, and, if need were, a 
martyr in the cause. As a man of letters he was not 
tied down to any one place to do his work, so he 
proposed to take the Curtins' farm and there live 
with his wife and his stepson. His wife added her 
protests to those of all his friends who heard of the 
project, but in vain, and so without sharing his illu- 
sions she cheerfully prepared to accompany him. 

It is impossible to conceive a more quixotic design. 
Many of the objections to it Stevenson realised him- 
self, or was told by his friends. But perhaps he 
never suspected how little he understood the Irish, 
or how utterly futile his action would have proved. 
It was, in the end, however, nothing but his father's 
illness which kept him for the time in this country. 
He abandoned the design with reluctance, and, as 
Sir Sidney Colvin says, " to the last he was never well 
satisfied that he had done right in giving way." 

It was driven from his mind, however, by events 
which touched him more nearly. In the autumn his 



BOURNEMOUTH 207 

parents had taken a house in Bournemouth for the 
winter, that Mr. Stevenson might have the compan- 
ionship of his son. In February the father was taken 
by his wife to Torquay, but came back to Bourne- 
mouth on the first of April. By the twenty-first he 
was so ill that it was thought better to bring him 
home, and he returned to Edinburgh. The accounts 
of him grew so alarming, that Louis followed on the 
sixth of May, but was too late for his coming to be 
of any use, and on the eighth all was over. 

Of the son's affection, and of his appreciation for 
his father, enough has been said to show how great 
the sense of his loss must have been. The shock of 
having found his father no longer able to recognise 
him preyed upon his mind, and for some time to 
come he was haunted day and night with "ugly im- 
ages of sickness, decline, and impaired reason,'' 
which increased yet further his sadness and the 
physical depression that weighed him down. 

In the meantime he took cold, was not allowed to 
attend the funeral, and never left the house until, at 
the end of May, he was able to return to Bourne- 
mouth, and quitted Scotland for the last time. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE UNITED STATES— 1887-88 

"But, indeed, I think we all belong to many countries. I 
am a Scotchman, touch me and you will find the thistle; I am 
a Briton, and live and move and have my being in the greatness 
of our national achievements; but am I to forget the long 
hospitality of that beautiful and kind country, France? Or 
has not America done me favours to confound my gratitude? 
Nay, they are all my relatives; I love them all dearly; and 
should they fall out among themselves (which God in his mercy 
forbid!), I believe I should be driven mad with their conflicting 
claims upon my heart." 

R. L. S., ms. of The Silverado Squatters. 

THE chief link which bound Stevenson to this 
country was now broken, for his mother was 
free to follow him and his wife to whatever 
climate the advice of the doctors might send him. 
Year after year the struggle with ill-health was be- 
coming more painful; "an enemy who was exciting 
at first, but has now, by the iteration of his strokes, 
become merely annoying and inexpressibly irksome.' ' 
He seemed condemned to a life in the sickroom, 
and even there, to be steadily losing ground. Under 
the altered circumstances, his uncle, Dr. George 
Balfour, peremptorily insisted on a complete change 
of climate for a year, suggesting a trial of either one 
of the Indian hill-stations or Colorado; this advice 
was reinforced by his Bournemouth physician, Dr. 
Scott, and, for several obvious reasons, America was 

208 



THE UNITED STATES 209 

preferred. As soon as his mother's promise to ac- 
company the party was obtained, Skerryvore was 
let, and by the middle of July their tickets were taken 
for New York. 

Early in the same month he had written to his 
mother: "... I can let you have a cheque for 
^100 to-morrow, which is certainly a pleasant thing 
to be able to say. I wish it had happened while my 
father was still here; I should have liked to help 
him once — perhaps even from a mean reason; that 
he might see I had not been wrong in taking to 
letters. But all this, I dare say, he observes, or, in 
some other way, feels. And he, at least, is out of 
his warfare, as I could sometimes wish I were out of 
mine. The mind of the survivor is mean; it sees the 
loss, it does not always feel the deliverance. Yet, 
about our loss, I feel it more than I can say — every 
day more — that it is a happy thing that he is now 
at peace. " 

But the invalid was not to escape from England 
without another illness; worn as he was by his recent 
experiences, he once more broke down, and was laid 
up again with hemorrhage. 

On the 20th August, however, he left Bournemouth 
for London, and spent Sunday in the City, at Arm- 
field's Hotel. Here, those of his closest friends who 
at that season were within reach came to bid him 
farewell, a last good-bye as it proved for all, since 
he never saw any one of them again. " In one way or 
another," he had written, "life forces men apart and 
breaks up the goodly fellowships for ever," and he 
himself was now to become "no more than a name, 



210 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

a reminiscence, and an occasional crossed letter very 
laborious to read." 

As Sidney Colvin had been the first to welcome 
him on his return from America, so he was the last to 
take leave of him the next day, when the party of five 
— for Valentine Roch accompanied them — embarked 
on the steamship Ludgate Hill. 

The beginning of their voyage was an unpleasant 
surprise, for their passages had been taken in igno- 
rance that the ship was used as a cattle-boat, and it 
was only when the family came on board that they 
learned that they were going to put in at Havre for 
their cargo before sailing for America. But Steven- 
son, ill as he was, did not allow mere discomfort to 
affect him. His mother's diary contains an entry 
highly characteristic both of herself and of her son: 
" We discover that it is a cattle-ship, and that we are 
going to Havre to take in horses. We agree to look 
upon it as an adventure and make the best of it. . . . 
It is very amusing and like a circus to see the horses 
come on board." Not only was there a shipload of 
horses, but the vessel resembled the fleet of Ophir af 
least in this, that she carried a consignment of apes-, 
of which " the big monkey, Jacko, scoured about the 
ship," and took a special fancy to Stevenson. The 
other passengers were not unentertaining, and the 
voyage itself was to him a pure delight, until they 
came to the Banks off Newfoundland, where he 
again caught cold. "I was so happy on board that 
ship," he wrote to his cousin Bob; "I could not have 
believed it possible. We had the beastliest weather, 
and many discomforts; but the mere fact of its being 



THE UNITED STATES 211 

a tramp-ship gave us many comforts; we could cut 
about with the men and officers, stay in the wheel- 
house, discuss all manner of things, and really be a 
little at sea. And truly there is nothing else. I had 
literally forgotten what happiness was, and the full 
mind — full of external and physical things, not full 
of cares and labours and rot about a fellow's be- 
haviour. My heart literally sang; I truly care for 
nothing so much as for that." 

By this time his reputation had crossed the At- 
lantic, and, chiefly by means of Jekyll and Hyde, had 
spread there to an extent which he had probably not 
yet realised. The first indication reached him, how- 
ever, before he had sighted the coast-line of the States, 
for, on September 6th, when the pilot came on board, 
it turned out that he was known on his boat as Hyde, 
while his better-tempered partner was called Jekyll. 

The next day the Ludgate Hill arrived at New 
York, where Stevenson was met by a crowd of re- 
porters, and — what was more to his taste — by his 
old friend, Mr. Will H. Low. He was forthwith car- 
ried off to an hotel where Mr. and Mrs. Charles Fair- 
child had made all arrangements for his reception, 
and the next day he proceeded to their house at New- 
port. But on the journey he caught fresh cold, and 
spent a fortnight there chiefly in bed. 

On his return to New York he saw a few people, 
mostly old friends like Mr. Low and his wife, and first 
made the personal acquaintance of Mr. Charles Scrib- 
ner and Mr. E. L. Burlingame. Augustus St. Gau- 
dens, the eminent American sculptor, now began to 
make the necessary studies for the large medallion, 



212 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

which was not completed until five years later. It is 
the most satisfactory of all the portraits of Stevenson, 
and has been reproduced with one or two slight modi- 
fications for the memorial in St. Giles' Cathedral. 
The artist was a great admirer of Stevenson's writings, 
and had said that if he ever had the chance he would 
gladly go a thousand miles for the sake of a sitting. 
The opportunity came to his doors; he now modelled 
the head and shoulders from life, and in the following 
spring made casts as well as drawings of the hands. 

Stevenson now first realised the advantages of his 
growing reputation, as shown in the profitable terms 
which the American papers and magazines offered 
him for almost any new work. In February, 1883, 
he had written to his mother: "My six books (since 
1878) have brought me in upwards of £600, about 
£400 of which came from magazines." But now he 
refused offers of £2000 for a weekly article through- 
out one year, and of £1600 for the serial rights of his 
next story, though accepting £700 for a series of 
twelve articles in Scribner's Magazine. In England 
also he had reached the turning-point of his fortunes. 
Such of his stories, essays and verses as had yet ap- 
peared only in magazines, were in 1887 collected and 
republished with additions, while in the next year 
he was elected to the Athenaeum Club as one of the 
nine persons chosen annually by the club for "dis- 
tinguished eminence." 

His first need, however, for the present, was to 
select a climate where he could best pass the winter. 
He had come to America in search of health, and was 
now advised to go to a place in the Adirondack 



THE UNITED STATES 213 

Mountains, close to the Canadian border. There, a 
sanatorium for consumptive patients had recently 
been established near the shores of Saranac Lake. 

Thither went accordingly Mrs. Louis Stevenson 
and her son, and there they succeeded in finding a 
house which would serve as winter-quarters for the 
family. Stevenson arrived with his mother on Octo- 
ber 3rd, and here he remained until the middle of the 
following April. It was no very pleasant spot, at all 
events in the winter months, and formed a curious 
contrast to his experience in the tropics. The cli- 
mate comprised every variety of unpleasantness: it 
rained, it snowed, it sleeted, it blew, it was thick fog; 
it froze — the cold was Arctic; it thawed — the dis- 
comfort was worse; and it combined these different 
phases in every possible way. Two things only 
could be advanced in its favour, the first and vital 
fact that Stevenson's health did not suffer, but actu- 
ally improved; and secondly, it served at times to 
remind him of Scotland — a Scotland "without peat 
and without heather," but that is no very hard task 
with the true Scot, as may be seen with Stevenson 
himself in the Pacific. 

The place was still somewhat undeveloped; the 
railway was opened to Saranac itself only during the 
course of the winter. In Dr. Trudeau, the physi- 
cian, Stevenson found an agreeable companion, and 
he also enjoyed the society of some of the resident 
patients, though he went but little beyond the limits 
of his own family. They occupied a house belong- 
ing to a guide, a frame-house of the usual kind with 
a verandah; here, with the services of Valen- 



2i 4 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

tine and a cook, and a boy to chop wood and draw 
water, they made themselves as comfortable as pos- 
sible during the winter. 

The younger Mrs. Stevenson began the campaign 
by a hasty visit to Canada to lay in a supply of furs 
for the family, and her foresight was well rewarded. 
In December the cold began, and by January the 
thermometer was sometimes nearly 30 degrees below 
zero. There was a stove in each chamber, and an 
open fireplace for logs in the central living-room, but 
these were of little avail. "Fires do not radiate," 
wrote Stevenson; "you burn your hands all the time 
on what seem to be cold stones." His mother gives 
an illustration: "Cold venison was crunching with 
ice after being an hour in the oven, and I saw a 
large lump of ice still unmelted in a pot where water 
was steaming all round it." 

Stevenson himself stood the cold better than any 
of his family, and, arrayed in a buffalo coat, astra- 
khan cap, and Indian boots, used to go out daily. 
He would take short walks on a hill behind the house, 
and skated on the lake when the ice could be kept 
clear. But both the ladies were ordered away for 
their health at different times, while in February the 
maid was laid up with a severe attack of influenza, 
the next victim being Stevenson himself. 

In the meantime he had not been idle. By Decem- 
ber he had written four of the essays for the magazine, 
and was already on the threshold of a new Scotch story. 

"I was walking one night in the verandah of a 
small house in which I lived, outside the hamlet of 
Saranac. It was winter; the night was very dark; 



THE UNITED STATES 215 

the air extraordinarily clear and cold, and sweet with 
the purity of forests. From a good way below, the 
river was to be heard contending with ice and boul- 
ders: a few lights appeared, scattered unevenly 
among the darkness, but so far away as not to lessen 
the sense of isolation. For the making of a story, 
here were fine conditions. . . . There cropped up in 
my memory a singular case of a buried and resusci- 
tated fakir, of which I had often been told by an 
uncle of mine, then lately dead, Inspector- General 
John Balfour. On such a fine frosty night, with no 
wind and the thermometer below zero, the brain 
works with much vivacity; and the next moment I 
had seen the circumstance transplanted from India 
and the tropics to the Adirondack wilderness and the 
stringent cold of the Canadian border. ... If the 
idea was to be of any use at all for me, I had to 
create a kind of evil genius to his friends and family, 
take him through many disappearances, and make 
this final restoration from the pit of death, in the icy 
American wilderness, the last and grimmest of the 
series. I need not tell my brothers of the craft that 
I was now in the most interesting moment of an 
author's life; the hours that followed that night 
upon the balcony, and the following nights and days, 
whether walking abroad or lying wakeful in my bed, 
were hours of unadulterated joy. 

"And while I was groping for the fable and the 
character required, behold I found them lying ready 
and nine years old in my memory. . . . Here, think- 
ing of quite other things, I had stumbled on the solu- 
tion, or perhaps I should rather say (in stagewright 



216 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

phrase) the Curtain or final Tableau of a story con- 
ceived long before on the moors between Pitlochry 
and Strathairdle, conceived in Highland rain, in the 
blend of the smell of heather and bog-plants, and with 
a mind full of the Athole correspondence and the 
Memoirs of the Chevalier de Johnstone. So long 
ago, so far away it was, that I had first evoked the 
faces and the mutual tragic situation of the men of 
Durrisdeer." 

At Saranac Mr. Osbourne wrote entirely on his own 
account a story called at first The Finsbury Tontine 
and afterwards The Game of Bluff, which, after the 
lapse of many months, and a course of collaboration 
with his stepfather, was to appear as The Wrong Box. 
At first this was an independent book, but as soon 
as the idea of collaboration had occurred to them, 
several projects were speedily set on foot, since the 
joint books would have this advantage, that Mr. 
Osbourne, being an American citizen, they could be 
copyrighted in the United States. 

Of their methods Mr. Osbourne writes: "When 
an idea for a book was started, we used to talk it 
over together, and generally carried the tale on from 
one invention to another, until, in accordance with 
Louis' own practice, we had drawn out a complete 
list of the chapters. In all our collaborations I 
always wrote the first draft, to break the ground, 
and it is a pleasure to me to recall how pleased Louis 
was, for instance, with the first three chapters of The 
Ebb Tide. As a rule, he was a man chary of praise, 
but he fairly overflowed toward those early chapters, 
and I shall never forget the elation his praise gave 



THE UNITED STATES 217 

me. The first draft was then written again and re- 
written by Louis and myself in turn. It was then 
worked over and over by each of us, as often as was 
necessary. For instance, the chapter at Honolulu 
where Dodd goes out to the lighthouse must have 
been written and re-written eleven times. Naturally 
it came about that it was the bad chapters that took 
the most re-writing. After this how can anybody 
but Louis or myself pretend to know which of us 
wrote any given passage? The Paris parts of The 
Wrecker and the end of The Ebb Tide (as it stands) 
I never even touched. {Letters, iii. 208.) The col- 
laboration was a mistake, for me, nearly as much as 
for him; but I don't believe Louis ever enjoyed any 
work more. He liked the comradeship — my work 
coming in just as his energy flagged, or vice versa; and 
he liked my applause when he — as he always did — 
pulled us magnificently out of sloughs. In a way, I 
was well fitted to help him. I had a knack for dia- 
logue — I mean, of the note-taking kind. I was a 
kodaker: he, an artist and a man of genius. I man- 
aged the petty makeshifts and inventions which were 
constantly necessary; I was the practical man, so to 
speak, the one who paced the distances, and used the 
weights and measures; in The Wrecker, the storm 
was mine; so were the fight and the murders on the 
Currency Lass; the picnics in San Francisco, and the 
commercial details of Loudon's partnership. Nares 
was mine and Pinkerton to a great degree, and Cap- 
tain Brown was mine throughout. But although the 
first four chapters of The Ebb Tide remain, save for 
the text of Herrick's letter to his sweetheart, almost 



218 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

as I first wrote them, yet The Wrong Box was more 
mine as a whole than either of the others. It was 
written and then re-written before there was any 
thought of collaboration, and was actually finished 
and ready for the press. There was, in consequence, 
far less give and take between us in this book than 
in the others. Louis had to follow the text very 
closely, being unable to break away without jeop- 
ardising the succeeding chapters. He breathed into 
it, of course, his own incomparable power, humour, 
and vivacity, and forced the thing to live as it had 
never lived before; but, even in his transforming 
hands, it still retains (it seems to me) a sense of fail- 
ure; and this verdict has so far been sustained by 
the public's reluctance to buy the book." 

But, already, in the heart of the mountains, Steven- 
son had been laying plans of travel, which were to 
lead him far and wide across the seas, and to end in 
a continued exile of which at this time he had never 
dreamed. He had always nourished a passion for 
the sea, whether in romance or in real life; it ran in 
his blood, and came to him from both his father and 
his grandfather. As a boy, on Saturday afternoons, 
he would make a party to go down to Leith to see 
the ships, for in those days, as always, he loved a 
ship "as a man loves Burgundy or daybreak." The 
sea was to him the redeeming feature of engineering, 
and a year or two after he had given up the pro- 
fession, he wrote with eager anticipation of a pro- 
jected trip in the Pharos, the lighthouse steamer. 
Then for ten years he hardly mentioned the sea again, 
and even in crossing the Atlantic as an amateur emi- 



THE UNITED STATES 219 

grant, he seems to have taken more interest in his 
fellow-passengers than in the ocean. But his feel- 
ings were unchanged: in 1883 his idea of a fortune 
is to "end with horses and yachts and all the fun of 
the fair"; and in some verses written at Hyeres, con- 
trasting his wife's aspirations with his own, he de- 
clares — 

"She vows in ardour for a horse to trot, 
I stake my votive prayers upon a yacht." 

We have seen how he enjoyed his voyage across 
the Atlantic; and to this pleasure he was perpetually 
recurring: " I have been made a lot of here, . . . but 

I could give it all up, and agree that was the 

author of my works, for a good seventy-ton schooner 
and the coins to keep her on. And to think there are 
parties with yachts who would make the exchange! 
I know a little about fame now; it is no good com- 
pared to a yacht; and anyway there is more fame in 
a yacht, more genuine fame." 

It was, therefore, no unexpected development, no 
outbreak of any new taste, when it became a favour- 
ite diversion of the winter nights at Saranac to plan a 
yachting cruise. So far, indeed, were the discussions 
carried, that the place for the piano in the saloon 
and the number and disposition of the small-arms 
were already definitely settled. At first, in spite of 
the severity of the climate and the proverbial rough- 
ness of the weather, they had looked chiefly to the 
Atlantic seaboard, but in the end of March, when 
Mrs. Stevenson left Saranac for California on a visit 
to her people, she was instructed to report if she 



220 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

could find any craft suitable for their purpose at 
San Francisco. 

At last, by the middle of April, Stevenson was free 
to return to the cities if he chose. He made a heroic 
effort to deal with the arrears of his correspondence: 
"In three of my last days I sent away upwards of 
seventy letters"; and then, turning his steps to New 
York, he there spent about a fortnight. The time to 
which he recurred with the greatest pleasure, was an 
afternoon he spent on a seat in Washington Square 
enjoying the company and conversation of "Mark 
Twain." But of the city he soon wearied; in the 
beginning of May he crossed the Hudson, and went 
to an hotel near the mouth of the Manasquan, a river 
in New Jersey, where with his mother and stepson he 
spent nearly a month. The place had been recom- 
mended to him by Mr. Low, who was able to spend 
some time there, and who says: "Though it was 
early spring and the weather was far from good, 
Louis (pretending that, in comparison with Scotland 
at least, it was fine spring weather) was unusually 
well, and we had many a pleasant sail on the river 
and some rather long walks. Louis was much inter- 
ested in the "cat-boat," and, with the aid of various 
works on sailing-vessels, tried to master the art of 
sailing it with some success. 

" He was here at Manasquan when a telegram ar- 
rived from his wife, who had been in San Francisco 
for a few weeks, announcing that the yacht Casco 
might be hired for a trip among the islands of the 
South Seas. I was there at the time, and Louis made 
that decision to go, which exiled him from his dearest 



THE UNITED STATES 221 

friends — though he little suspected at the time — while 
the messenger waited." 

The decision taken, Stevenson returned to New 
York on the 28th, and by the 7th June he had reached 
California. Who, that has read his description of 
crossing the mountains on his first journey to the 
West, but remembers the phrase — " It was like meet- 
ing one's wife!" And this time his wife herself was 
at Sacramento to meet him. 

It was a busy time. The Casco was the first ques- 
tion — a fore and aft schooner, ninety-five feet in 
length, of seventy tons burden, built for cruising in 
Californian waters, though she had once been taken 
as far as Tahiti. She had most graceful lines, and 
with her lofty masts, white sails and decks and glit- 
tering brasswork, was a lovely craft to the eye, as 
she sat like a bird upon the water. Her saloon was 
fitted most luxuriously with silk and velvet of gaudy 
colours, for no money had been spared in her con- 
struction; nevertheless her cockpit was none too safe, 
her one pump was inadequate in size and almost 
worthless; the sail-plan forward was meant for racing 
and not for cruising, and even if the masts were still 
in good condition, they were quite unfitted for hurri- 
cane weather. 

Nevertheless the vessel was chartered, and all 
preparations were put in hand. The owner, Dr. 
Merritt, an eccentric Californian millionaire, was at 
first most backward about the whole affair, and, 
without having seen him, displayed the greatest dis- 
trust of Stevenson. The latter was very unwell, and 
getting rapidly worse, for San Francisco disagreed 



222 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

with him. Matters hung fire, but at last his wife dis- 
covered that Dr. Merritt wanted to meet him. An 
interview took place and all difficulties vanished. 
"I'll go ahead now with the yacht," said the doctor: 
"I'd read things in the papers about Stevenson, and 
thought he was a kind of crank; but he's a plain, 
sensible man, that knows what he's talking about 
just as well as I do." 

Along with the yacht, at the owner's request, they 
gladly engaged his skipper, Captain Otis, who knew 
the Casco well, and the cook, a Chinaman, who 
passed himself off as a Japanee. The former choice 
they had no reason to regret, for the captain showed 
himself a bold and skilful seaman, who, beginning 
the voyage with a supreme contempt for his new em- 
ployers, ended it as an intimate and valued friend, 
whose portrait for the rest may be found in the pages 
of The Wrecker. A crew of four deck-hands, " three 
Swedes and the inevitable Finn," was engaged by the 
captain, and four "sea-lawyers" they proved to be; 
a reporter, trying to ship himself as a hand, was 
ejected, and a passage was, with great difficulty, re- 
fused to a Seventh-Day Adventist, who afterwards 
with a crew of his fellow-believers travelled over the 
whole of the South Seas. 

The destination of the Casco was next to be set- 
tled. For a time the choice lay between two groups 
of islands at a considerable distance, the Galapagos 
and the Marquesas groups. But after some discus- 
sion it was the latter which had been chosen, and so 
to the Marquesas they went. 

In the meantime they were living at the Occidental 




Stevenson on the Yacht "Casco : 



THE UNITED STATES 223 

Hotel in San Francisco. Virgil Williams was now 
dead, but Mrs. Williams was indefatigable in their 
service, and other friends gathered round them, 
among whom Stevenson was especially drawn to Dr. 
George Chismore, alike for his Scotch blood, his love 
of literature, and the force and tenderness of his char- 
acter. But, as he himself had known trouble in this 
city, here least of all was he likely to disregard the 
misfortunes of others. An Australian journalist seven 
years afterwards wrote to The Times: — 

"Some years ago I lay ill in San Francisco, an 
obscure journalist, quite friendless. Stevenson, who 
knew me slightly, came to my bedside and said, 'I 
suppose you are like all of us, you don't keep your 
money. Now, if a little loan, as between one man of 
letters and another — eh ? ' 

"This to a lad writing rubbish for a vulgar sheet in 
California. " 

At last, on June 26th, the party took up their 
quarters on the Casco, and at the dawn of the 28th 
she was towed outside the Golden Gate, and headed 
for the south across the long swell of the Pacific. 

So with his household he sailed away beyond the 
sunset, and America, like Europe, was to see him no 
more. 



CHAPTER XIII 

SOUTH SEA CRUISES— THE EASTER 
PACIFIC— JUNE 1888-JUNE 1889 

"This climate; these voyagings; these landfalls at dawn; 
new islands peaking from the morning bank; new forested har- 
bours; new passing alarms of squalls and surf; new interests 
of gentle natives — the whole tale of my life is better to me than 
any poem." — Letters, iii. 155. 

FOR nearly three years to come, Stevenson wan- 
dered up and down the face of the Pacific, 
spending most of his time in the Hawaiian 
Islands and the Gilberts, in Tahiti, and in Samoa, 
his future home; during this period, he visited, how- 
ever cursorily, almost every group of importance in 
the Eastern and Central Pacific. 

The delight these experiences kindled for him can 
never be expressed, since, apart from one or two 
phrases in his letters, he has failed to convey any 
image of it himself. It is hardly too much to say 
that nobody else in the world would have derived 
such keen or such varied enjoyment from cruising 
through these islands, so wild, so beautiful — among 
their inhabitants so attractive, so remote from experi- 
ence — in these waters, so fascinating and so danger- 
ous. The very romance that hangs about the South 
Seas is fatal to any attempt to sustain, among the 
mazes of detail and necessary explanation, the charm 
suggested by their name. Stevenson himself set out 

224 



SOUTH SEA CRUISES 225 

to write an account of his wanderings and adventures 
among the islands it had for years been the dream of 
his life to see, but as soon as he essayed the task, he 
was overwhelmed with a mass of legend and history 
and anthropology. It is hard for people at their 
own firesides to realise the differences between the 
islands visited in one cruise in the same ocean. Per- 
haps some vague and general conception of the diver- 
sity of Stevenson's experiences might be formed by 
imagining a rapid visit to the islands of Sardinia, 
Sicily, Majorca, and Tenerife, a fresh departure for 
Jersey and the lies d'Or, ending with a passing 
glimpse at the West Indies. 

The point now to be considered is not, however, 
the customs and character of the natives whom Ste- 
venson encountered, but rather how he was affected 
and influenced by what he saw, the characteristics 
which were called out in him during the course of his 
travel, and the impressions which he himself pro- 
duced. 

The first point, as we have seen, was the Mar- 
quesas, a group of high * islands of extreme beauty, 
occupied by the French and but seldom visited by 
travellers, remote from any other group and out of 

1 Islands in the Pacific are usually divided into "high" and "low"; 
the former being, generally speaking, islands of volcanic origin, often 
rising several thousand feet above the sea, densely wooded and 
beautiful in the extreme. These frequently have a barrier reef of 
coral, protecting what would otherwise be an ironbound coast, 
but their main structure is igneous rock. "Low" islands are atolls 
or mere banks built by the coral insect, never more than twenty 
feet above water, and owing any beauty they possess to the sea, the 
sun, and the palm-tree. The Marquesas, Tahiti, Samoa, and the 
Hawaiian group are high islands; the Paumotus, the Gilberts, and 
the Marshalls are low. 



226 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

the track of ships and steamers. For these the Casco 
now steered a course of three thousand miles across 
the open sea. Fortunately the main object of the 
cruise seemed likely to be gained without delay; the 
warmer climate and the sea air suited Stevenson at 
once, and he grew stronger day by day. The voyage 
was pleasant but without event other than the pas- 
sing squalls; and after two-and- twenty days at sea 
they made their landfall. a The first experience can 
never be repeated. The first love, the first sunrise, 
the first South Sea Island, are memories apart and 
touched a virginity of sense. On the 28th of July 
1888, the moon was an hour down by four in the 
morning, . . . and it was half-past five before we 
could distinguish our expected islands from the clouds 
on the horizon. The interval was passed on deck 
in the silence of expectation, the customary thrill 
of landfall heightened by the strangeness of the 
shores that we were then approaching. Slowly they 
took shape in the attenuating darkness. Uahuna, 
piling up to a truncated summit, appeared the first 
upon the starboard bow; almost abeam arose our 
destination, Nukahiva, whelmed in cloud; and be- 
twixt, and to the southward, the first rays of the sun 
displayed the needles of Uapu. These pricked about 
the line of the horizon, like the pinnacles of some or- 
nate and monstrous church, they stood there, in the 
sparkling brightness of the morning, the fit sign- 
board of a world of wonders. . . . The land heaved 
up in peaks and rising vales; it fell in cliffs and 
buttresses; its colour ran through fifty modulations 
in a scale of pearl and rose and olive; and it was 



SOUTH SEA CRUISES 227 

crowned above by opalescent clouds. The suffusion 
of vague hues deceived the eye; the shadows of 
clouds were confounded with the articulations of the 
mountain; and the isle, and its unsubstantial canopy, 
rose and shimmered before us like a single mass. 
There was no beacon, no smoke of towns to be ex- 
pected, no plying pilot. . . . 

"We bore away along the shore. On our port- 
beam we might hear the explosions of the surf; a 
few birds flew fishing under the prow; there was no 
other sound or mark of life, whether of man or beast, 
in all that quarter of the island. Winged by her own 
impetus and the dying breeze, the Casco skimmed 
under cliffs, opened out a cove, showed us a beach 
and some green trees, and flitted by again, bowing 
to the swell. . . . Again the cliff yawned, but now 
with a deeper entry; and the Casco, hauling her 
wind, began to slide into the bay of Anaho. Rude 
and bare hills embraced the inlet upon either hand; 
it was enclosed to the landward by a bulk of shattered 
mountains. In every crevice of that barrier the for- 
est harboured, roosting and nesting there like birds 
about a ruin; and far above, it greened and rough- 
ened the razor edges of the summit. 

" Under the eastern shore, our schooner, now bereft 
of any breeze, continued to creep in; the smart crea- 
ture, when once under way, appearing motive in her- 
self. From close aboard arose the bleating of young 
lambs; a bird sang in the hillside; the scent of the 
land, and of a hundred fruits or flowers flowed forth 
to meet us; and, presently, a house or two appeared. 
. . . The mark of anchorage was a blow-hole in 



228 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

the rocks, near the south-easterly corner of the bay. 
Punctually to our use, the blow-hole spouted; the 
schooner turned upon her heel; the anchor plunged. 
It was a small sound, a great event; my soul went 
down with these moorings whence no windlass may 
extract nor any diver fish it up; and I, and some part 
of my ship's company, were from that hour the bond- 
slaves of the isles of Vivien. " 

This was Nukahiva, the island of Herman Mel- 
ville's Typee, and here for three weeks they lay in 
Anaho Bay, where there lived only natives and one 
white trader. They then sailed round to the south 
coast of the same island, to Taiohae, the port of entry 
and the capital of the group. 

The two special features of the Marquesas which 
differentiate them from the other islands which Ste- 
venson saw, are first, that the natives were till very 
recently the most inveterate cannibals of Polynesia, 
and second, that their population was melting away 
like snow off a dyke, so that extinction seemed im- 
minent within the next few years. 

Into the details of his visit I have no intention of 
going — partly they may be read in his own vol- 
ume In the South Seas — but I would draw attention 
to Stevenson's attitude toward the native races, for 
though I shall have occasion to return to it again in 
Samoa, there was but little growth or development of 
his essential feelings or principles in dealing with 
them. Intelligent sympathy was the keynote, and the 
same kindliness to them as to all men. He never 
idealised them, and his view was but rarely affected 
by sentiment. His sense of history, combined with 



SOUTH SEA CRUISES 229 

his power of seeing things in a new light, and the re- 
fusal to accept commonplaces without examination, 
here stood him in good stead. 

Five years before, in the Riviera, he had written: 
"There is no form of conceit more common or more 
silly than to look down on barbarous codes of morals. 
Barbarous virtues, the chivalrous point of honour, the 
fidelity of the wild Highlander or the two-sworded 
Japanese, are of a generous example." 

This was of the Japanese in their recent feudal pe- 
riod: here is one of his earliest notes in the Mar- 
quesas, after meeting the natives face to face: — 

August 3rd. — Tropical Night Thoughts. I awoke 
this morning about three; the night was heavenly in 
scent and temperature; the long swell brimmed into 
the bay and seemed to fill it full and then subside; 
silently, gently, and deeply the Casco rolled; only at 
times a block piped like a bird. I sat and looked sea- 
ward towards the mouth of the bay at the headlands 
and the stars; at the constellation of diamonds, each 
infinitesimally small, each individual and of equal 
lustre, and all shining together in heaven like some 
old-fashioned clasp; at the planet with the visible 
moon, as though he were beginning to re-people 
heaven by the process of gemination; at many other 
lone lamps and marshalled clusters. And upon a 
sudden it ran into my mind, even with shame, that 
these were lovelier than our nights in the north, the 
planets softer and brighter, and the constellations 
more handsomely arranged. I felt shame, I say, as 
at an ultimate infidelity: that I should desert the 
stars that shone upon my father; and turning to the 



2 3 o LIFE OF STEVENSON 

shore-side, where there were some high squalls over- 
head, and the mountains loomed up black, I could 
have fancied I had slipped ten thousand miles away 
and was anchored in a Highland loch; that when day 
came and made clear the superimpending slopes, it 
would show pine and the red heather and the green 
fern, and roofs of turf sending up the smoke of peats, 
and the alien speech that should next greet my ears 
should be Gaelic, not Kanaka. 1 

"The singular narrowness of this world's range, 
and, above all, the paucity of human combinations, 
are forced alike upon the reader and the traveller. 
The one ranging through books, the other over peo- 
pled space, comes with astonishment on the same 
scenery, the same merry stories, the same fashion, 
the same stage of social evolution. Under cover of 
darkness here might be a Hebridean harbour; and 
if I am to call these men savages (which no bribe 
would induce me to do), what name should I find for 
Hebridean man ? The Highlands and Islands some- 
what more than a century back were in much the 
same convulsive and transitory state as the Mar- 
quesas to-day. In the one, the cherished habit of 
tattooing; in the other, a cherished costume, pro- 
scribed; in both, the men disarmed, the chiefs dis- 
honoured, new fashions introduced, and chiefly that 
new pernicious fashion of regarding money as the 
be-all and end-all of existence; the commercial age, 
in each case, succeeding at a bound to the age mili- 

1 Kanaka, the Hawaiian word for a man, is used in the Eastern 
and Central Pacific as equivalent to "native," "Polynesian." In 
Australia and Fiji it generally means Melanesian = black boy. 



SOUTH SEA CRUISES 231 

tant: war, with its truces and its courtesies, suc- 
ceeded by peace with its meanness and its unending 
effort: the means of life no longer wrested with a 
bare face from hereditary enemies, but ground or 
cheated out of next-door neighbours and old family 
friends; in each case, a man's luxury cut off, beef 
driven under cover of night from lowland pastures 
denied to the meat-loving Highlander, long pig pi- 
rated from the next village to the man-eating Ka- 
naka.'' 

And here is the practical outcome of his experience 
as a traveller, written in 1890, a passage specially 
selected for praise by so able and original an investi- 
gator as Mary Kingsley: — 

"When I desired any detail of savage custom, or of 
superstitious belief, I cast back in the story of my 
fathers, and fished for what I wanted with some trait 
of equal barbarism: Michael Scott, Lord Derwent- 
water's head, the second-sight, the Water Kelpie, — 
each of these I have found to be a killing bait; the 
black bull's head of Stirling procured me the legend 
of Rahero; and what I knew of the Cluny Macpher- 
sons, or the Appin Stewarts, enabled me to learn, and 
helped me to understand, about the Tevas of Tahiti. 
The native was no longer ashamed, his sense of kin- 
ship grew warmer, and his lips were opened. It is 
this sense of kinship that the traveller must rouse and 
share; or he had better content himself with travels 
from the blue bed to the brown." 

It is pleasant to read of the farewell of Prince 
Stanilao, an intelligent and educated gentleman, from 
whom Stevenson had learned much of the history and 



232 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

condition of the islands, and with whom he had spent 
a long afternoon, telling him the story of Gordon, 
"and many episodes of the Indian Mutiny, Lucknow, 
the second battle of Cawnpore, the relief of Arrah, the 
death of poor Spottiswoode and Sir Hugh Rose's hot- 
spur midland campaign." How many white men 
would have been at the pains to give so much instruc- 
tion or so much pleasure to a native in a foreign pos- 
session? * This is the result: " Ah vous devriez rester 
ici, mon cher ami. Vous etes les gens qu'il faut pour 
les Kanaques; vous etes doux, vous et votre famille; 
vous seriez obeis dans toutes les lies." 

It was the same at Anaho, the same afterwards in 
Atuona: he understood the natives; he treated them 
with understanding, and they liked him. The higher 
the rank, for the most part, the greater the liking, the 
more complete the appreciation. Stanilao and Vae- 
kehu, the aged queen, were the great folk of the arch- 
ipelago; Stevenson, in whom snobbishness was un- 
known, found them also the most estimable. 

"This is the rule in Polynesia, with few exceptions; 
the higher the family, the better the man — better 
in sense, better in manners, and usually taller and 
stronger in body. A stranger advances blindfold. 
He scrapes acquaintance as he can. Save the tattoo 
in the Marquesas, nothing indicates the difference in 
rank ; and yet almost invariably we found, after we had 
made them, that our friends were persons of station." 

But his attention was by no means limited to na- 
tives; the behaviour that he enjoined on missionaries 
he exercised freely himself; to white men and half- 
castes he was equally genial and accessible. The 



SOUTH SEA CRUISES 233 

governor and the gendarmes, the priests and the lay- 
brothers, the traders and the "Beach," all found him 
kindly and courteous, and the best of company. 

The Resident carried him off to show him the pris- 
on, but it was empty; the women were gone calling 
and the men were shooting goats upon the mountains. 
The gendarmes told him stories of the Franco-Ger- 
man war, and gave him charming French meals. Of 
the missionaries, the portraits of the great and good 
Dordillon, the veteran bishop only just dead, and of 
Frere Michel, the architect, may be found in the 
South Sea volume; from Stevenson's notes I give 
the charming picture of Pere Simeon: — 

"Pere Simeon, the small frail figure in the black 
robe drawing near under the palms; the girlish, kind 
and somewhat pretty face under the straw hat; the 
strong rustic Gascon accent; the sudden lively dof- 
fing of the hat, at once so French and so ecclesiastical; 
he was a man you could not look upon without visions 
of his peasant ancestors, worthy folk, sitting at home 
to-day in France, and rejoiced (I hope often) with 
letters from their boy. Down we sat together under 
the eaves of the house of Taipi-Kikino, and were pres- 
ently deep in talk. I had feared to meet a missionary, 
feared to find the narrowness and the self-sufficiency 
that deface their publications, that too often disgrace 
their behaviour. There was no fear of it here; Pere 
Simeon admired these natives as I do myself, ad- 
mired them with spiritual envy; the superior of his 
congregation had said to him on his departure : ' You 
are going among a people more civilised than we — 
peut-etre plus civilises que nous-memes' : in spite of 



234 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

which warning, having read some books of travel on 
his voyage, he came to these shores (like myself) 
expecting to find them peopled with lascivious mon- 
keys. Good Bishop Dordillon had opened his eyes: 
' There are nothing but lies in books of travel,' said 
the bishop. 

"What then was Pere Simeon doing here? The 
question rose in my mind, and I could see that he 
read the thought. Truly they were a people, on the 
whole, of a mind far liker Christ's than any of the 
races of Europe; no spiritual life, almost no family 
life, but a kindness, a generosity, a readiness to give 
and to forgive, without parallel; to some extent that 
was the bishop's doing; some of it had been since 
undone; death runs so busy in their midst, total ex- 
tinction so instantly impended, that it seemed a hope- 
less task to combat their vices; as they were, they 
would go down in the abyss of things past; the 
watchers were already looking at the clock; Pere 
Simeon's business was the visitation of the sick, to 
smooth the pillows of this dying family of man." 

In contrast to this melancholy vigil were Steven- 
son's ecstasy of life and the joy with which he entered 
into gathering shells upon the shore. 

"Ashore to the cove and hunted shells, according 
to my prevision; but the delight of it was a surprise. 
To stand in the silver margin of the sea, now dry 
shod, now buried to the ankle in the thrilling coolness, 
now highei than the knee; to watch, as the reflux drew 
down, wonderful marvels of colour and design fleet- 
ing between my feet, to grasp at, to miss, to seize 
them; and now to find them what they promised, and 



SOUTH SEA CRUISES 235 

now to catch only maya of coloured sand, pounded 
fragments, and pebbles, that, as soon as they were 
dry, became as dull and homely as the flint upon a 
garden path. I toiled about this childish pleasure 
in the strong sun for hours, sharply conscious of my 
incurable ignorance, and yet too much pleased to be 
ashamed. Presently I came round upon the shelves 
that line the bottom of the cliff; and there, in a pool 
where the last of the surf sometimes irrupted, making 
it bubble like a spring, I found my best, that is, my 
strangest shell. It was large, as large as a woman's 
head, rugged as rock, in colour variegated with green 
and orange; but alas, the 'poor inhabitant' was at 
home. On the struggles of conscience that ensued I 
scorn to dwell; but my curiosity, after several jour- 
neys in my hand, returned finally to his rock home, 
of whose sides he greedily laid hold, and he gained a 
second term of the pleasures of existence." 

On August 22nd the Casco left Nukahiva and ar- 
rived the following day at Taahauku in the island 
of Hiva-oa, a more remote and even more thinly pop- 
ulated island. Here they stayed twelve days, and 
here Stevenson and his family went through the cer- 
emony of adoption into the family of Paa-aeua, the 
official chief of Atuona, while Mr. Osbourne "made 
brothers" also with the deposed hereditary chief, 
Moipu. 

These observances meant anything or nothing, ac- 
cording to the desire of the initiated. I single them 
out for mention here because (apart from white 
men living among the Kanakas) they were offered 
to and accepted by those only who, like Bishop 



236 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

Dordillon, had a close intimacy and sympathy with 
the natives. 

The time had come to start for Tahiti by a course 
lying through the Paumotus or Dangerous Archipel- 
ago, a group of numerous low islands, unlighted save 
for one or two pier-head lamps, and most inade- 
quately laid down upon the chart. 

For this reason at Taiohae they had shipped a mate 
who knew those waters well. The much-travelled 
" Japanese " cook had been returned to his home, and 
his place taken by a genuine Chinaman. Ah Fu 
came to the Marquesas as a child and had grown up 
among the natives; he now followed the fortunes of 
his new masters with entire devotion for two years 
until the claims of his family were asserted and took 
him home reluctantly to China. 

On September 4th the Casco sailed, and three days 
later, before sunset, the captain expected to sight the 
first of the Paumotus. 

It was not, however, till sunrise on the following 
morning that they saw land, and then it was not the 
island they had expected to make; in place of having 
been driven to the west, they had been swept by a 
current some thirty miles in the opposite direction. 
The first atoll was "flat as a plate in the sea, and 
spiked with palms of disproportioned altitude." 
The next, seen some hours later, was "lost in blue 
sea and sky; a ring of white beach, green underwood, 
and tossing palms, gemlike in colour; of a fairy, of a 
heavenly prettiness. The surf was all round it, white 
as snow, and broke at one point, far to seaward, on 
what seems an uncharted reef." 



SOUTH SEA CRUISES 237 

Night fell again, and found them amid a wilderness 
of reefs corresponding so little with the maps that 
the schooner must lie to and wait for the morning. 

The next day they ran on to Fakarava, and entered 
the lagoon in safety. It was a typical low island, 
some eighty miles in circumference by a couple of 
hundred yards broad, chosen to be the headquarters 
of the government only on account of two excellent 
passages in the barrier reef, one of which was sure 
to be always available. 

In one respect they were fortunate: "We were 
scarce well headed for the pass before all heads were 
craned over the rail. For the water, shoaling under 
our board, became changed in a moment to surpris- 
ing hues of blue and grey; and in its transparency 
the coral branched and blossomed, and the fish of 
the inland sea cruised visibly below us, stained and 
striped, and even beaked like parrots. ... I have 
since entered, I suppose, some dozen atolls in different 
parts of the Pacific, and the experience has never 
been repeated. That exquisite hue and transparency 
of submarine day, and these shoals of rainbow fish, 
have not enraptured me again." 

A fortnight spent in Fakarava passed uneventfully 
away. There were few inhabitants left on the island, 
which was never very populous at any time. Steven- 
son lived ashore in a house among the palms, where 
he learned much of the natives and their customs 
and beliefs from the half-caste Vice-President, M. 
Donat. 

In the last week of September they left for Tahiti, 
and in two days were anchored safely at Papeete : 



238 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

the capital and port of entry of the Society group. 
Beautiful as all the high islands of the South Seas 
are, it is in Tahiti and its neighbours — the Otaheite 
of Captain Cook — that the extreme point of sublimity 
and luxuriance is reached. The vegetation is not 
less lovely, nor the streams and waterfalls less beau- 
tiful or less abundant than elsewhere, but the crags 
and pinnacles of the lofty mountains there are far 
more picturesque, and so abrupt that they are not 
smothered in the greenery, which gives an appear- 
ance of tameness to other islands in the same latitudes. 
Stevenson and his wife lived ashore in a small 
house, where he prepared his correspondence for the 
outgoing mail. He was very unwell; he went no- 
where, saw no one of any interest, native or foreign, 
and soon grew tired of Papeete. A cold caught at 
Fakarava increased, with access of fever and an 
alarming cough. He mended a little, but Papeete 
was not a success, so after a time the Casco, with a 
pilot on board, took the party round to Taravao on 
the south side of the island. On this passage they 
were twice nearly lost. The first day they had a 
long beat off the lee-shore of the island of Eimeo; and 
the following day were suddenly becalmed, and began 
to drift towards the barrier reef of Tahiti. "The 
reefs were close in," wrote Stevenson, "with, my eye! 
what a surf! The pilot thought we were gone, and 
the captain had a boat cleared, when a lucky squall 
came to our rescue. My wife, hearing the order 
given about the boats, remarked to my mother, c Isn't 
that nice? We shall soon be ashore!' Thus does 
the female mind unconsciously skirt along the verge 



SOUTH SEA CRUISES 239 

of eternity." Their danger was undoubtedly great, 
greater far than they suspected. 

The atmosphere at Taravao was close, and mos- 
quitoes were numerous; by this time Stevenson was 
so ill that it was necessary, without a moment's delay, 
to secure more heafthy quarters. Accordingly his 
wife went ashore, and following a path, discovered 
the shanty of a Chinaman who owned a wagon and a 
pair of horses. These she hired to take them to 
Tautira, the nearest village of any size, a distance of 
sixteen miles over a road crossed by one-and-twenty 
streams. Stevenson was placed in the cart, and, 
sustained by small doses of coca, managed, with the 
help of his wife and Valentine, to reach his destina- 
tion before he collapsed altogether. Being intro- 
duced at Tautira by the gendarme, they were asked 
an exorbitant rent for a suitable house, but they se- 
cured it, and there made the patient as comfortable 
as possible. The next day there arrived the Princess 
Moe, ex- Queen of Raiatea, one of the kindest and 
most charming of Tahitians, who lives in the pages of 
Pierre Loti and Miss Gordon-Cumming. She had 
come to the village, and hearing there was a white 
man very ill, she came over to the house. " I feel that 
she saved Louis' life," writes Mrs. Stevenson. "He 
was lying in a deep stupor when she first saw him, 
suffering from congestion of the lungs and in a 
burning fever. As soon as he was well enough, she 
invited us to live with her in the house of Ori, the 
sub-chief of the village, and we gladly accepted her 
invitation." 

Meanwhile, at Taravao, it was discovered that the 



2 4 o LIFE OF STEVENSON 

schooner's jib-boom was sprung; it was duly spliced, 
and when Stevenson was really better, the Casco 
came round to Tautira. Here a more startling dis- 
covery was made, and the party learned what their 
true position had been two or three weeks before. 
The elder Mrs. Stevenson gave a feast on board to 
the women of Tautira, and one old lady offered up 
a prayer, asking that if anything were wrong with 
the masts it might be discovered in time. As soon 
as the guests were gone, the Yankee skipper, acting 
no doubt on the principle of keeping his powder dry, 
went aloft, and subjected the masts to a close ex- 
amination. They were both almost eaten out with 
dry-rot. Had either of them gone by the board 
during the voyage in the Moorea channel, or off the 
reefs in any of the islands, nothing could have saved 
the Casco, even if her passengers and crew had es- 
caped in one of the boats. It was now considered 
hardly safe for any one to remain on deck; but, with 
many reefs in her mainsail, the schooner was sent to 
Papeete, where the masts were patched up as far as 
was possible, no new spars of sufficient size being 
obtainable. 

The intended visit to the neighbouring islands of 
Huahine, Raiatea, and Borabora was abandoned, 
Stevenson and his party remaining at Tautira until 
the Casco should be ready to take them back to civili- 
sation. His health again recovered, and he enjoyed 
the new conditions of life beyond words — scenery, 
climate, and company. Tautira was " the most beau- 
tiful spot" and "its people the most amiable" he had 
ever encountered. Except for the French gendarme 




Mrs. Thomas Stevenson 



SOUTH SEA CRUISES 241 

and Pere Bruno, the priest, a Dutchman from Amster- 
dam who had forgotten his own language, the travel- 
lers had passed beyond the range of Europeans and 
lived in a Tahiti touched as little as might be by any 
foreign influence. They dwelt in one of the curious 
"bird-cage'' houses of the island, and were on the 
friendliest terms with all the village. 

Their host, Ori, was a perpetual delight to them all. 
" A Life-guardsman in appearance," as Mr. Osbourne 
describes him, "six foot three in bare feet; deep and 
broad in proportion; unconsciously English to an 
absurd extent; feared, respected, and loved." 

It was one of the happiest periods in the exile's life, 
and perhaps in consequence his "journal," an irregu- 
larly kept notebook, was dropped, never to be re- 
sumed. And so it happens that to this passage in 
his life he never returned, pen in hand, and of it he 
has left no other record than one or two pages in his 
correspondence. 

He "actually went sea-bathing almost every day"; 
he collected songs and legends, materials for the great 
book; he began to work once more at his novel, The 
Master of Ballantrae, and "almost finished" it. At 
Moe's instance special exhibitions of the old songs 
and dances of Tahiti were given for him in the hall of 
assembly in Tautira. He was adopted into the clan 
of the Tevas, to which Ori belonged, and exchanged 
names with that chief, who thenceforward signed 
himself as "Rui," 1 Louis himself receiving also, in 
more formal fashion, the name of Territera. 

He now wrote the greater part of his two Polynesian 

1 /. e., Louis: there being no L in Tahitian. 



242 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

ballads, The Feast of Famine, relating to the Mar- 
quesas, and The Song of Rahero, a genuine legend of 
the Tevas. In the same days, however, his music 
brought him to write for the old Scots tune of "Wan- 
dering Willie" that most pathetic cry of his exile: — 

"Home, no more home to me, whither must I wander?" 

almost the only complaint, even in a dramatic form, 
that he ever allowed himself to make. 

The repairs of the Casco took an unexpected time; 
the weather became bad, and a stormy sea and rivers 
in flood prevented any communication between Tau- 
tira and Papeete. The visitors used up all their 
money: Ori had taken charge of it for them and doled 
it out, a small piece at a time, until all was gone. 
Their supplies of food being exhausted, they were 
reduced to living on the bounty of the natives, and 
though Stevenson himself continued to eat sucking- 
pig with continual enjoyment, the others pined for a 
change. When time passed and no ship came, the 
whole countryside began to join in their anxiety. 
Each morning, as soon as the dawn lifted, a crowd 
ran to the beach, and the cry came back: "E ita 
pahil" (No ship). 

At last Ori took a party of young men in a whale- 
boat, although the weather was still bad, and went to 
Papeete to find out the cause of the delay. "When 
Ori left," says Mrs. Stevenson, "we besought him 
not to go, for we knew he was risking the lives of 
himself and his men. Then he was gone a week over 
time, which made us heart-sick. He brought back 
the necessary money and a store of provisions, and a 



SOUTH SEA CRUISES 243 

letter from the captain telling us when to look for 
him. Amongst the food was a basket of champagne. 
The next day we gave a commemoration dinner to 
Ori, when we produced the champagne. Ori drank 
his glass and announced it beyond excellence, a drink 
for chiefs. 'I shall drink it continually/ he added, 
pouring out a fresh glass. ' What is the cost of it by 
the bottle?' Louis told him, whereupon Ori sol- 
emnly replaced his full glass, saying, 'It is not fit 
that even kings should drink a wine so expensive.' 
It took him days to recover from the shock." 

At last the Casco was ready for sea, and on Christ- 
mas Day the party embarked for Honolulu. The 
farewell with Ori was heart-breaking, and all vowed 
never again to stay so long as two months in one 
place, or to form so deep and yet so brief a friendship. 

They sighted the outlying Paumotus and the mail 
schooner, and after that their voyage was without 
other incident than squalls and calms. For a while 
they skirted hurricane weather, though nothing came 
of it; but between calms and contrary winds their 
progress was slow, and they nearly ran out of pro- 
visions. " We were nearly a week hanging about the 
Hawaiian group" wrote Osbourne, " drifting here 
and there with different faint slants of wind. We 
had little luxuries kept back for our farewell dinner — 
which took place at least three times with a diminish- 
ing splendour that finally struck bottom on salt horse. 
It was a strange experience to see the distant lights of 
Honolulu, and then go to bed hungry; to rise again 
in the morning, and find ourselves, not nearer, but 
further off. When at last the weather altered and 



244 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

we got our wind, it was a snoring Trade, and we ran 
into the harbour like a steamboat. It was a dra- 
matic entry for the overdue and much-talked-of 
Casco, flashing past the buoys and men-of-war, with 
the pilot in a panic of alarm. If the Casco ever 
did thirteen knots, she did it then." 

Arrived at Honolulu they found their safety had 
been despaired of by all, including even Mrs. Ste- 
venson's daughter, Mrs. Strong, who was then living 
there with her husband and child. 

Of the capital city of the Hawaiian kingdom it is 
difficult to give any true impression, so curious in 
those days was the mixture of native life and civilisa- 
tion. To any one coming from the islands it seemed 
a purely American city — not of the second or even of 
the third rank, modified only by its position in the 
verge of the tropics; for any one who entered these 
latitudes and saw a native population for the first 
time, it must have been picturesque and exotic be- 
yond words. 

Stevenson sent the yacht back to San Francisco, 
and took a house at Waikiki, some four miles from 
Honolulu along the coast. Here he took up his 
abode in a lanai — a sort of large pavilion, off which 
the bedrooms opened, built on native lines, and pro- 
vided only with jalousied shutters; and here he set- 
tled down in earnest to finish The Master of Ballantrce 
— "the hardest job I ever had to do" — already run- 
ning in Scribner's Magazine, and to be completed 
within a given time. 

He did not end his task till May — " The Master is 
finished, and I am quite a wreck and do not care for 



SOUTH SEA CRUISES 245 

literature." When the story was finally published 
in the autumn, it was at once recognized on all hands 
as the sternest and loftiest note of tragedy which its 
author had yet delivered. "I'm not strong enough 
to stand writing of that kind," said Sir Henry Yule on 
his deathbed to S. R. Crockett, who had been read- 
ing it to him; "it's grim as the road to Lucknow." 

In the meantime, though Stevenson was constantly 
unwell, even his want of health at the worst of these 
times was very different from his invalid life at 
Bournemouth. He retired with his wife to a small 
and less draughty cottage about a hundred yards 
from the lanai, and there continued his work as 
before. 

The little colony was very comfortably settled. 
Valentine had left their service and departed to 
America, but Ah Fu had established himself in the 
kitchen with his pots and pans. 

In spite of his worse health, Stevenson was able to 
go about as usual, and saw a good many people, 
especially in the large circle of his step-daughter's 
acquaintance. Through this connection he found 
from the beginning a ready entree to the Royal Palace, 
where Kalakaua, the last of the Hawaiian kings, 
held his court at Yvetot: a large, handsome, genial, 
dissipated monarch, a man of real ability and iron 
constitution, versed beyond any of his subjects in 
the history and legends of his kingdom. From the 
very beginning of the acquaintance his relations with 
Stevenson were most friendly in no conventional 
sense. They genuinely liked one another from the 
start, and Kalakaua, holding out every inducement, 



246 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

really tried very hard to get his visitor to settle in 
Hawaii. 

At Honolulu, Stevenson already began to hear a 
good deal of Samoa and its troubles, for several of his 
new friends had formed part of the amazing embassy 
Kalakaua had sent to Apia in the preceding year to 
propose a native federation of the Polynesian Islands. 
It was on the information now received that he was 
driven to write the first of his letters to The Times. 

The letter appeared on the nth March, and be- 
fore the week was out there occurred the great 
Samoan hurricane which sunk or stranded six men- 
of-war in the harbour of Apia, when the Calliope 
alone, by virtue of her engines, steamed out of the 
gap in the very teeth of the gale. 

Immediately afterwards, Stevenson records a curi- 
ous episode at Honolulu in a letter to Mr. Baxter: — 

"27th April, 1889. — A pretty touch of seaman 
manners: the English and American Jacks are deadly 
rivals: well, after all this hammering of both sides 
by the Germans, and then the news of the hurricane 
from Samoa, a singular scene occurred here the Sun- 
day before last. The two church parties sponte pro- 
pria fell in line together, one Englishman to one 
American, and marched down to the harbour like one 
ship's company. None were more surprised than 
their own officers. I have seen a hantle of the sea- 
man on this cruise; I always liked him before; my 
first crew on the Casco (five sea-lawyers) near cured 
me; but I have returned to my first love." 

At Samoa we shall see that he had many friends in 
the navy: in nothing did he take more delight than in 



SOUTH SEA CRUISES 247 

their company and friendship. Of this there was al- 
ready a beginning at Honolulu with the wardroom of 
H.B.M.S. Cormorant. "I had been twice to lunch 
on board, and H.B.M.'s seamen are making us ham- 
mocks; so we are very naval. But alas, the Cor- 
morant is only waiting her relief, and I fear there are 
not two ships of that stamp in all the navies of the 
world." 

The hammocks were part of his preparations for a 
new cruise. He had arrived with the intention of 
crossing America during the course of the summer, 
and so returning to England, with ultimate views of 
Madeira as a winter refuge. But even Honolulu was 
too cold for him, and by the end of March he was full 
of another scheme of South Sea travel. This time his 
voyage was to be to the Gilbert Islands to the south- 
west, on board the vessel belonging to the Boston 
Mission or whatever other craft he could induce to 
take him. His mother decided to return to Scot- 
land and visit her sister, but his wife and stepson 
looked eagerly forward to sharing with him this new 
experience. 

In the end of April he paid a visit by himself to the 
lee-shore of the island of Hawaii, and spent a week on 
the coastlands, living with a native judge. Here he 
took long rides, and saw and learned as much of na- 
tive life and characteristics as lay within his reach; 
the most thrilling event of the visit being the de- 
parture of some natives to be immured in the laza- 
retto of Molokai. 

A month later he visited the island of Molokai itself 
and spent by special permission a week in the leper 



248 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

settlement. Father Damien had died on the fifteenth 
of April, so that Stevenson heard only by report of 
the man whose memory he did so much to vindicate. 

The scene of Damien's labours is one of the most 
striking places in the world. A low promontory, some 
three miles long, with a village upon either side of 
it, lies at the foot of a beetling precipice, that shuts 
it off from the remainder of the island to which there 
is no access except by a most difficult bridle-track. 
Hither, since 1865, have been sent all persons in the 
group who are found to have contracted leprosy, and 
here they are tended by doctor and priest, by officers 
and sisters and nurses, until they die. Who can do 
justice to such a place, to such a scene? Here Ste- 
venson spent a week, and afterwards wrote a frag- 
mentary and incomplete account of his visit. The 
best record of it is contained in the letters written at 
the time to his wife, and shortly afterwards to James 
Payn and Sidney Colvin. The description of his 
landing cannot be omitted. 

"Our lepers were sent (from the steamer) in the 
first boat, about a dozen, one poor child very horrid, 
one white man leaving a large grown family behind 
him in Honolulu, and then into the second stepped 
the sisters and myself. I do not know how it would 
have been with me had the sisters not been there. My 
horror of the horrible is about my weakest point; but 
the moral loveliness at my elbow blotted all else out; 
and when I found that one of them was crying, poor 
soul, quietly under her veil, I cried a little myself; 
then I felt as right as a trivet, only a little crushed to 
be there so uselessly. I thought it was a sin and a 



SOUTH SEA CRUISES 249 

shame she should feel unhappy; I turned round to 
her, and said something like this: "Ladies, God Him- 
self is here to give you welcome. I'm sure it is good 
for me to be beside you; I hope it will be blessed to 
me; I thank you for myself and the good you do me." 
It seemed to cheer her up; but indeed I had scarce 
said it when we were at the landing-stairs, and there 
was a great crowd, hundreds of (God save us!) panto- 
mime masks in poor human flesh, waiting to receive 
the sisters and the new patients. 

"... Gilfillan, a good fellow, I think, and far 
from a stupid, kept up his hard Lowland Scottish talk 
in the boat while the sister was covering her face; but 
I believe he knew, and did it (partly) in embarrass- 
ment, and part perhaps in mistaken kindness. And 
that was one reason, too, why I made my speech to 
them. Partly, too, I did it, because I was ashamed 
to do so, and remembered one of my golden rules, 
"When you are ashamed to speak, speak up at once." 
But, mind you, that rule is only golden with stran- 
gers; with your own folks, there are other considera- 
tions." 

After leaving the leper settlement the steamer 
landed him upon another part of the island, where 
he and the captain took horse and rode a long way to 
the house of some Irish folk, where Stevenson slept. 
Next day he continued with a native guide until he 
reached the summit of the pass above Kalawao, 
down which alone the settlement could be entered by 
land. 

Of his ride across the island he wrote: — "Maui be- 
hind us towered into clouds and the shadow of clouds. 



250 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

The bare opposite island of Lanai — the reef far out, 
enclosing a dirty, shoal lagoon — a range of fish-ponds, 
large as docks, and the slope of the shady beach on 
which we mostly rode, occupied the left hand. On 
the right hand the mountain rose in steeps of red clay 
and spouts of disintegrated rock, sparsely dotted with 
the white-flowering cow-thistle. Here and there 
along the foreshore stood a lone pandanus, and once a 
trinity of dishevelled palms. In all the first part of 
that journey, I recall but three houses and a single 
church. Plenty of horses, kine and sullen-looking 
bulls were there; but not a human countenance. 
"Where are the people?" I asked. "Pau Kanaka 
make; Done: people dead," replied the guide, with 
the singular childish giggle which the traveller soon 
learns to be a mark of Polynesian sensibility. 

From this expedition he returned to complete his 
preparations for immediate departure. The family 
now possessed an unrivalled fund of information 
about "the Islands," and had accumulated not only 
the necessary stores, but also a collection of all the 
resources of civilisation best fitted to appeal to the 
native heart, ranging from magic lanterns and Ameri- 
can hand-organs to "cheap and bad cigars." The 
only difficulty was the ship, and the Morning Star 
not being available, the Equator, a trading schooner 
of sixty-two tons register, Captain Denis Reid, was 
chartered. The terms agreed upon were original and 
entertaining; Stevenson paid a lump sum down for a 
four months' cruise with a proviso for renewal, if 
necessary. The ship agreed for a fixed daily extra 
price to land at any place in the line of its trading 



SOUTH SEA CRUISES 251 

cruise on Stevenson's written demand. On the other 
hand, when it stopped anywhere for its own business, 
were it only to land a sewing-machine or to take on 
board a ton of copra, it was bound, if the charterer 
so desired, to remain there three days without extra 
charge. 

The twenty-fourth of June arrived : Stevenson and 
his wife and stepson were on board with the indis- 
pensable Ah Fu, and the schooner was ready to cast 
off. At the last moment two fine carriages drove 
down at full speed to the wharf and there deposited 
King Kalakaua and a party of his native musicians. 
There was but a minute for good-bye and a parting 
glass, for Kalakaua had none of Ori's scruples over 
champagne. The king returned to shore and stood 
there waving his hand, while from the musicians, lined 
up on the very edge of the wharf, came the tender 
strains of a farewell. 



CHAPTER XIV 

SOUTH SEA CRUISES— THE CENTRA!, 
PACIFIC— JUNE 1889-APRIL 1891 

"I will never leave the sea, I think; it is only there that a 
Briton lives: my poor grandfather, it is from him that I inherit 
the taste, I fancy, and he was round many islands in his day; 
but I, please God, shall beat him at that before the recall is 
sounded. . . . Life is far better fun than people dream who 
fall asleep among the chimney-stacks and telegraph wires." — 
Letters, iii. 159. 

THE object of the new cruise for Stevenson was 
to visit a native race of a different character 
from those he had already seen, living as far 
as was still possible under purely natural conditions. 
The Gilberts are a group of some sixteen low islands 
of no great size, densely populated, situated close to 
the Equator. At this time they were independent, 
nearly every island being governed by its own king or 
council of elders. Scenery in all of them is reduced to 
the simplest elements, a strand with cocoa-nut-palms 
and pandanus, and the sea — one island differing from 
another only in having or not having an accessible 
lagoon in its centre; in none of them is the highest 
point of land as much as twenty feet above sea-level. 
This very flatness and absence of striking features 
render the islands a more perfect theatre for effects of 
light and cloud, while the splendours of the sea are 
further enhanced by the contrast of the rollers break- 

252 



SOUTH SEA CRUISES 253 

ing on the reef and the still lagoon sleeping within the 
barrier, of the dark depths of ocean outside, and the 
brilliant shoal- water varying infinitely in hue with the 
inequalities of the shallows within. 

Stevenson's former experience lay, his future was 
almost entirely to lie, among the Polynesians — the 
tall, fine, copper-coloured race, speaking closely allied 
dialects of the same language, and including among 
their family the Hawaiians, Marquesans, Tahitians, 
Samoans, and the Maoris of New Zealand. The 
Gilbert and Marshall natives, on the other hand, are 
Micronesians — darker, shorter, and to my taste less 
comely folk — speaking languages widely removed 
from the Polynesian — people with a dash of black 
blood, stricter in morals and more ferocious, with an 
energy and backbone which the others but rarely 
possess. It is noteworthy that Polynesians never 
commit suicide; on the Line it is not uncommon; 
and the frequent causes are unrequited love, or grief 
for the dead. 

When this visit should be finished, the travellers 
were not finally committed to any plan, but their 
latest intention was to proceed to the Marshalls and 
thence to the Carolines, and so "return to the light 
of day by way of Manila and the China ports." 

Scarcely, however, were they at sea before these 
schemes were modified. One moonlight night, in 
the neighbourhood of Johnstone Island, the talk fell 
upon the strange history of the loss of the brigantine, 
Wandering Minstrel, and from this germ was quickly 
developed the plot of The Wrecker. The life of 
■iruising was for the time all that Stevenson could 



254 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

desire: after the depression of Honolulu he had en- 
tirely recovered his health and spirits on the open sea, 
and the only difficulty in continuing his cure was its 
great expense. Surely if he possessed a schooner of 
his own, he might make his home on board and pay 
the current charges, at all events in part, by trading. 
So The Wrecker was to be written and sent to a pub- 
lisher from Samoa, and there, with the proceeds, they 
were to buy a schooner, stock the trade-room, and 
start upon their wanderings under the guidance of 
Denis Reid, who threw himself heart and soul into 
the spirit of the new venture. 

It was a wild scheme. Versatile as Stevenson was, 
it is impossible even to think of him as a " South Sea 
merchant," haggling with natives over the price of 
copra, and retailing European goods to them at a 
necessarily exorbitant rate. But the project, though 
never realised, did finally determine the course of his 
life, for instead of taking him to Ponape, Guam, and 
the Philippines, it sent him south to Samoa, there to 
take up his abode and live and die. 

In the meanwhile the first part of the voyage was 
safely performed, and the schooner arrived at the 
town of Butaritari in the island of Great Makin. 
Under ordinary conditions a white man, if he con- 
ducted himself reasonably, might wander through all 
the group in perfect safety, but the arrival of the 
Equator fell at an unpropitious moment. For the 
first and probably the only time in his wanderings, 
Stevenson was in real danger of violence from natives. 

The two principal firms trading in Butaritari be- 
longed to San Francisco; the missionaries in the group 



SOUTH SEA CRUISES 255 

were sent there by the Boston Society, and the influ- 
ence of American ideas was considerable. Nine days 
before Stevenson's arrival was the Fourth of July, the 
day on which American Independence is celebrated 
throughout the States. The king of Butaritari had 
observed the festival with enthusiasm, but not wisely, 
nor in accordance with missionary views, for he had 
removed the taboo upon spirits which ordinarily was 
imposed for all his subjects. 

Neither sovereign nor courtiers had been sober 
since, and though, with a lofty Sabbatarianism, the 
king declined to be photographed upon a Sunday, it 
was not to be supposed that he could be refused more 
drink if he offered to purchase it at the usual price. 
There was this further difficulty in the way of restor- 
ing sobriety to his dominions, that even if one firm de- 
clined to supply him, there was the rival house, which, 
having as yet sold less of its liquor, might be less 
anxious for the special open season to come to an end. 
So the carnival continued for ten days more, and all 
the white men could do was to get out their pistols 
and show in public such skill as they possessed in 
shooting at a mark. 

Twice a large stone was hurled at Stevenson as he 
sat in his verandah at dusk, just as the lamp was 
brought out and placed beside him. He now entered 
into negotiations with the German manager of the 
other firm, whom he found to take a far more serious 
view of the situation than any of them, and whom he 
induced by diplomacy to cease to supply the natives. 
The crisis was now reached: would the populace, irri- 
tated by refusal, carry either of the bars with a rush ? 



256 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

Fortunately, all passed off smoothly. The king 
came to his senses, and the taboo was re-imposed. 
Quiet was restored, and only just in time, for a day 
or two later a large body of rather turbulent natives 
arrived from the next island for a dance competition, 
quite ready to profit by any political trouble. 

The danger having been averted, the party lived 
at peace in the house of Maka, the Hawaiian mission- 
ary, one of the most lovable of men. They saw the 
dances, they gave exhibitions of their magic lantern, 
and as all pictures were supposed to be photographs, 
and photographs could only be taken from actual 
scenes, their slides of Bible history brought about a 
distinct religious reaction among the people. They 
made friends with various natives, but the end of their 
stay was by comparison tame and dull, and after 
about a month the Equator returned and carried them 
away. 

The terms of the elaborate charter party were en- 
tirely disregarded. The captain from the beginning 
acted as though the vessel were Stevenson's yacht, and 
went or stayed according to the wishes of his passen- 
ger. Stevenson, on his part, took a keen interest in 
the ship's fortunes, and was as eager to secure copra 
as any one on board. The captain acted as showman 
of the group. "I remember once," said Osbourne, 
"that he banged the deck with a marlinspike and 
called below to Louis: 'Come on deck, quick; here's 
the murderer and the poisoner I told you of, com- 
ing off in a boat.'" 

They visited the island of Nonuti, and were then 
continuing on a southward course, when the wind 



SOUTH SEA CRUISES 257 

veered and they made for Apemama, a large island 
ruled by the despot Tembinok' who allowed no white 
man in his kingdom. As an exceptional favour, how- 
ever, granted only after a long inspection of the party 
and two days devoted to consideration, Stevenson and 
his family were admitted as the special guests of the 
king. He cleared a site for them, pitched four houses 
upon it for their accommodation, and tabooed with a 
death penalty their well and their enclosure against all 
his subjects. The settlement was begun to the dis- 
charge of a rifle; the cook who was lent to the Ste- 
vensons, and was guilty of gross misbehaviour, re- 
ceived six shots from the king's Winchester over his 
head, at his feet, and on either side of him; and 
though no one was actually killed while the white 
men were on the island, yet the power of life and 
death in the king's hands was plainly shown to be no 
obsolete prerogative. 

In Apemama the party spent a couple of months in 
daily intercourse with this very remarkable personage, 
with whom they entered into close relations of friend- 
ship. Of all the chiefs Stevenson knew in the Pacific, 
Ori, the Tahitian, was probably the one for whom he 
had most affection; Mataafa, in Samoa, probably he 
most respected; but Tembinok' was unquestionably 
the strongest character, and the man who interested 
him the most. Who, that has read the South Sea 
chapters, has forgotten his appearance? 

"A beaked profile like Dante's in the mask, a mane 
of long black hair, the eye brilliant, imperious, and 
inquiring; for certain parts in the theatre, and to one 
who could have used it, the face was a fortune. His 



258 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

voice matched it well, being shrill, powerful, and 
uncanny, with a note like a sea-bird's. Where there 
are no fashions, none to set them, few to follow them 
if they were set, and none to criticise, he dresses — as 
Sir Charles Grandison lived — "to his own heart." 
Now he wears a woman's frock, now a naval uniform, 
now (and more usually) figures in a masquerade 
costume of his own design — trousers and a singular 
jacket with shirt tails, the cut and fit wonderful for 
island workmanship, the material always handsome, 
sometimes green velvet, sometimes cardinal red silk. 
This masquerade becomes him admirably. I see him 
now come pacing towards me in the cruel sun, soli- 
tary, a figure out of Hoffmann." 

In spite of this grotesque disguise, there was noth- 
ing ridiculous about the man. He had been a fighter 
and a conqueror, "the Napoleon" of his group; he 
was, besides a poet, a collector, the sole trader and 
man of business, and a shrewd judge of mankind. 
Having admitted the missionaries to his island, he had 
learned to read and write; having found the mission- 
aries interfering, as he thought, with his trade and his 
government, without hesitation he had banished them 
from his domains. 

For the account of this unique society, this master- 
ful sway, I must refer the reader to the seventy pages 
of Stevenson's own description, which were the part 
of his diary least disappointing to himself. It could 
hardly be told in fewer words, and extracts can do it 
no justice. It is the more valuable in that it rep- 
resents a state of things which is gone for ever. 
Only five years later, when I visited the island in 1894. 



SOUTH SEA CRUISES 259 

all was changed. Tembinok , was dead, the Gilbert 
Islands had been annexed by Great Britain, and a 
boy was king under the direction of a British Resi- 
dent. How severe the old discipline had been was 
proclaimed by a large " speak-house " at Tuagana, 
some two hours' sail down the coast, where all round 
the interior of the house, at the end of the roof-beams, 
there had been a set of eight-and-forty human skulls, 
of which I saw nearly twenty still remaining. The 
house had been built by Tembinok's father, and the 
heads were those of malefactors, both white and na- 
tive, or, at all events, of people who had caused dis- 
pleasure to the king. The Stevensons had never 
heard of the existence of this place from Tembinok', 
though his father's grave was here, and here also were 
lying the two finest sea-going canoes in all the island. 

But for the history of Tembinok', and for Steven- 
son's experience — how he was mesmerised for a cold 
by a native wizard, and how, with many searchings 
of conscience, he bought for Mr. Andrew Lang the 
devil-box of Apemama, the reader must go — and will 
thank me for sending him — to Stevenson's own pages. 
I will quote here only the king's leave-taking of his 
guest, and the impression which Stevenson had pro- 
duced upon this wild, stern, and original nature: — 

"As the time approached for our departure Tem- 
binok' became greatly changed; a softer, more mel- 
ancholy, and in particular, a more confidential man 
appeared in his stead. To my wife he contrived 
laboriously to explain that though he knew he must 
lose his father in the course of nature, he had not 
minded nor realised it till the moment came; and that 



26o LIFE OF STEVENSON 

now he was to lose us, he repeated the experience. 
We showed fireworks one evening on the terrace. It 
was a heavy business; the sense of separation was in 
all our minds, and the talk languished. The king 
was specially affected, sat disconsolate on his mat, 
and often sighed. Of a sudden one of the wives 
stepped forth from a cluster, came and kissed him in 
silence, and silently went again. It was just such a 
caress as we might give to a disconsolate child, and 
the king received it with a child's simplicity. Pres- 
ently after we said good-night and withdrew; but 
Tembinok' detained Mr. Osbourne, patting the mat 
by his side, saying: 'Sit down. I feel bad, I like 
talk.' ' You like some beer ? ' said he; and one of the 
wives produced a bottle. The king did not partake, 
but sat sighing and smoking a meerschaum pipe. ' I 
very sorry you go/ he said at last. 'Miss Stlevens he 
good man, woman he good man, boy he good man; 
all good man. Women he smart all the same man. 
My woman,' glancing towards his wives, 'he good 
woman, no very smart. I think Miss Stlevens he big 
chiep all the same cap'n man-o'-wa'. I think Miss 
Stlevens he rich man all the same me. All go 
schoona. I very sorry. My patha he go, my uncle 
he go, my cutcheons he go, Miss Stlevens he go; all 
go. You no see king cry before. King all the same 
man: feel bad, he cry. I very sorry.' , 

"In the morning it was the common topic in the 
village that the king had wept. To me he said: 
'Last night I no can 'peak: too much here,' laying 
his hand upon his bosom. 'Now you go away all the 
same my pamily. My brothers, my uncle go away. 



SOUTH SEA CRUISES 261 

All the same.' This was said with a dejection al- 
most passionate. . . The same day he sent me a 
present of two corselets, made in the island fashion 
of plaited fibre, heavy and strong. One had been 
worn by his grandfather, one by his father, and, the 
gift being gratefully received, he sent me, on the re- 
turn of his messengers, a third — that of his uncle. . . 

"The king took us on board in his own gig, dressed 
for the occasion in the naval uniform. He had little 
to say, he refused refreshments, shook us briefly by 
the hand, and went ashore again. That night the 
palm-tops of Apemama had dipped behind the sea, 
and the schooner sailed solitary under the stars." 

The remainder of Stevenson's notes on the Gilberts 
relate chiefly to the white, or, at any rate, the alien 
population of the group, which at that date was 
naturally a sort of No Man's Land — one of the last 
refuges for the scoundrels of the Pacific. Not that 
all the traders by any means were black sheep; some 
of them and some of the captains and mates working 
in those waters were decent fellows enough, but 
among them were thieves, murderers, and worse, pa- 
triots who showed an uncommon alacrity in changing 
their nationality when any man-of-war of their own 
Government happened to come their way. When the 
Gilberts were finally annexed in 1892, a labour ves- 
sel took a shipload of these gentry on board, bound 
for a South American republic, which, fortunately for 
that State, they never reached — the vessel being lost 
at sea with all hands. 

Of the stories that were then current Stevenson col- 
lected a number, and had he been a realist, his read- 



262 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

ers might have been depressed through many volumes 
by the gloom and squalor of these tragedies; as it was, 
he utilised only a little of what he had actually seen 
as material for the darker shadows in the romantic 
and spirited Beach of Falesa. 

After returning to Butaritari, the Equator, with Ste- 
venson and his party on board, left for Samoa. The 
trip was tedious but for the excitement of running by 
night between the three different positions assigned 
by the charts to a reef which possibly had no real 
existence. There were the usual squalls, in one of 
which, during the night, the safety of the ship de- 
pended entirely on the cutting of a rope. The fore- 
topmast snapped across and the foresail downhaul 
fouled in the wreckage, but Ah Fu climbed to the top 
of the galley with his knife, and the position was 
saved. Next morning, however, the signal halyard 
had disappeared, nor was its loss accounted for until 
several weeks afterwards, when the Chinaman pre- 
sented his mistress with a neat coil of the best quality 
of rope. He had once heard her admiring it, and 
took occasion of the squall and extremity of danger 
to procure it for her as a present. 

The schooner arrived about the 7th of December 
at Apia, the capital and port of Upolu, the chief of the 
group known collectively as Samoa 1 or the Navigator 
Islands, which Stevenson now saw for the first time, 
and which he had every intention of leaving finally 
within two months of his arrival. 

1 The first two syllables are long: Sa-moa; similarly Vai-lima; but 
Fale-sa. The first A in A-pia is shorter, but the vowel-sounds 
throughout are as in Italian. The consonants are as in English, 
but g = ng. Thus Pagopago is pronounced Pangopango. 



SOUTH SEA CRUISES 263 

The Equator's charter now came to an end. Hiring 
a cottage in the hamlet a mile above the town, Steven- 
son began to collect the material necessary for those 
chapters which should be allotted to Samoa in his 
book upon the South Seas. This obtained, he pro- 
posed to start at once for Sydney, and thence proceed 
to England. 

The Samoan record, as he anticipated from the out- 
set, would deal chiefly with the history of the recent 
war, and for this he engaged in a most painstaking 
and — so far as I can judge — most successful judicial 
investigation into the actual facts and the course of 
events within the last few years. It is difficult for any 
one who has not lived hard by a South Sea " Beach " 
to realise how contradictory and how elusive are its 
rumours, and how widely removed from anything of 
the nature of " evidence. " But into this confused 
mass Stevenson plunged, making inquiries of every 
one to whose statements he could attach any import- 
ance, American or English or German (my order is 
alphabetical), and invoking the aid of interpreters 
for native sources of information. He weighed and 
sifted his information with the greatest care, and I 
have never heard any of the main results contested 
which were embodied in A Footnote to History. 

For the sake of this work he lived chiefly in Apia 
at the house of an American trader, Mr. H. J. Moors. 
He made the acquaintance of Colonel de Coetlogon, 
the English consul, with whom he maintained the 
most friendly terms, who had been with Gordon in 
Khartoum; of Dr. Stuebel, the German Consul-Gen- 
eral, perhaps the ablest and most enlightened, and 



264 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

certainly not the least honourable diplomatist that 
the Great Powers ever sent to the South Seas; of the 
Rev. W. E. Clarke and other members of the London 
Mission, his warm friends then and in later days; and 
especially of the high chief Mataafa, who impressed 
him at once as the finest of the Samoans. 

It was the only time Stevenson ever lived in Apia 
or its immediate suburbs, and a few words in passing 
should be devoted to the Beach, with which, now, 
more than at any time, he was brought into contact. 
This term, common to other South Sea islands, com- 
prises, as I understand, every white resident in a place 
who has not some position that can be definitely 
described; in the last instance it denotes the mere 
beach-combers, loafers or mean whites, although most 
people would include in it all persons of markedly 
less consideration than themselves. There was much 
kindliness and generosity even among the lowest, and 
not more want of energy or of scruple than might have 
been expected. There was also a genial readiness to 
believe rumours, balanced by a willingness to think no 
worse of the persons against whom they were told. 
The number of white or half-caste residents in Apia 
was supposed to be about three hundred, of whom 
about two- thirds were British subjects, the bulk of the 
remainder being Germans. 

At first Stevenson was not greatly struck either by 
the place or by the natives; the island was "far less 
beautiful than the Marquesas or Tahiti; a more 
gentle scene, gentler acclivities, a tamer face of na- 
ture; and this much aided, for the wanderer, by the 
great German plantations, with their countless regu- 



SOUTH SEA CRUISES 265 

lar avenues of palms." Nor was he "specially at- 
tracted by the people; but they are courteous; the 
women very attractive, and dress lovely; the men 
purposelike, well set up, tall, lean, and dignified." 

In the end of December he made a boat expedition 
with Mr. Clarke some dozen miles to the east, partly 
on mission business, and partly on his own account 
to visit Tamasese, the chief whom the Germans had 
formerly set up as king; not long afterwards he made 
a similar journey to the west to Malua, where the 
London Mission have long had a training college for 
native students. It was on this latter occasion that 
he was first introduced to the natives by the Rev. J. E. 
Newell as " Tusitala," " The Writer of Tales," the 
name by which he was afterwards most usually known 
in Samoa. Here he gave an address which was trans- 
lated for their benefit; and a few days later he de- 
livered a lecture in Apia upon his travels, on behalf of 
a native church, Dr. Stuebel taking the chair. 

From his notes made on the first expedition I draw 
one or two passages, descriptive of Samoan customs 
and of Samoan scenery, which is nowhere more beau- 
tiful than in the inlet he then visited. 

Fagaloa, Dec. 31st. 

"Past Falefa where the reef ends and the coaster 
enters on the open sea, all prettinesses, as if they were 
things of shelter, end. The hills are higher and more 
imminent, and here and there display naked crags. 
The surf beats on bluff rocks, still overhung with 
forest; the boat, still navigated foolishly near the 
broken water, is twisted to and fro with a drunken 



266 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

motion, in the backwash and broken water of the 
surf; and though to-day it is exceptionally smooth, 
another boat that crosses us appears only at intervals 
and for a moment on the blue crest of the swells. At 
last, rounding a long spit of rocks on which the sea 
runs wildly high, the bay, gulf, or rather (as the one 
true descriptive word) the loch of Fagaloa opens. 
With a new song struck up, we begin to enter the 
enchanted bay; high clouds hover upon the hilltops; 
thin cataracts whiten lower down along the front of 
the hills; all the rest is precipitous forest, dark with 
the intensity of green, save where the palms shine 
silver in the thicket; it is indeed a place to enter with 
a song upon our lips. 

" . . . . Fagaloa is the original spot where every 
prospect pleases. It was beautiful to see a vast black 
rain squall engulf the bottom of the bay, pass over 
with glittering skirts, climb the opposite hill, and 
cling there and dwindle into rags of snowy cloud; 
beautiful too was a scene, where a little burn ran into 
the sea between groups of cocos and below a rustic 
bridge of palm-stems; something indescribably Jap- 
anese in the scene suggested the idea of setting on the 
bridge three gorgeously habited young girls, and these 
relieved in their bright raiment against the blue of the 
sky and the low sea-line completed the suggestion; it 
was a crape picture in the fact. We went on further 
to the end of the bay, where the village sits almost 
sprayed upon by waterfalls among its palm-grove, and 
round under the rocky promontory, by a broken path 
of rock among the bowers of foliage; a troop of little 
lads accompanied our progress, and two of them pos- 



SOUTH SEA CRUISES 267 

sessed themselves of my hands and trotted alongside 
of me with endless, incomprehensible conversation; 
both tried continually to pull the rings off my fingers; 
one carried my shoes and stockings, and proudly re- 
minded me of the fact at every stoppage. They were 
unpleasant, cheeky, ugly urchins; and the shoe- 
bearer, when we turned the corner and sat down in 
the shade and the sea-breeze on black ledges of vol- 
canic rock, splashed by the sea, nestled up to my side 
and sat pawing me like an old acquaintance. ..." 

But Stevenson was now to take a step that proved 
more decisive than for the moment he imagined. 
The winter home he had once projected at Madeira 
was to be transferred to Samoa; he purchased some 
three hundred acres in the bush, three miles behind 
and six hundred feet above the level of the town of 
Apia. The ground was covered, not exactly with 
virgin forest, for it had formerly been occupied (ac- 
cording to tradition) by a Samoan bush town — but 
with vegetation so dense that on her first visit his wife 
had been quite unable to penetrate to the spot where 
the house afterwards stood. The land, however, was 
to be cleared, and a cottage erected, which would at 
any rate shelter the family during such intervals be- 
tween their cruises as it should suit them to spend in 
Samoa. But the real reason for the selection of this 
island for a settlement, lay principally in the facilities 
of communication. In the matter of mails, Samoa 
was exceptionally fortunate. The monthly steamers 
between Sydney and San Francisco received and de- 
posited their mail-bags in passing, and very soon after 
began to call at the port of Apia. A German steamer 



268 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

the Lubeck, ran regularly between Apia and Sydney, 
and the New Zealand boat, the Richmond, called on 
her circular trip from Auckland to Tahiti. 

So the ground was bought, the money paid, and 
orders were left to begin the necessary operations. 
Early in February the party sailed for Sydney, where 
Mrs. Strong was now waiting to see them on their 
way home to England for the summer. 

Soon after reaching Australia, Stevenson found in 
a religious paper a letter from Dr. Hyde, a Presby- 
terian minister in Honolulu, depreciating the labours 
of Father Damien at Molokai, and reviving against 
his memory some highly unchristian and unworthy 
slanders. The letter was written in a spirit peculiarly 
calculated to rouse Stevenson's indignation, and when 
he heard at the same time a report which may or may 
not have been true, but which he, at any rate, fully 
believed, to the effect that a proposed memorial to 
Damien in London had been abandoned on account 
of this or some similar statement, his anger knew no 
bounds. He sat down and wrote the celebrated letter 
to Dr. Hyde, which was forthwith published in 
pamphlet form in Sydney, and subsequently in Edin- 
burgh, in the Scots Observer. He had the courage of 
his opinions, and realised the risks he was taking : " I 
knew I was writing a libel: I thought he would bring 
an action; I made sure I should be ruined; I asked 
leave of my gallant family, and the sense that I was 
signing away all I possessed kept me up to high- water 
mark, and made me feel every insult heroic." 

But in place of the news for which his friends were 
waiting, that he had started upon his homeward voy- 



SOUTH SEA CRUISES 269 

age, there came a telegram to C. Baxter on the 
10th April: "Return Islands four months. Home 
September." 

He had taken cold in Sydney, and after the lapse of 
eighteen months, having again started a hemorrhage, 
was very ill and pining for the sea. Mrs. Stevenson 
heard of a trading steamer about to start for "The 
Islands," applied for three passages, and was refused, 
went to the owners and was again refused, but stating 
inflexibly that it was a matter of life or death to her 
husband, she carried her point and extorted their un- 
willing consent. 

This vessel was the steamship Janet Nicoll, an 
iron screw-steamer of about six hundred tons, char- 
tered by Messrs. Henderson and Macfarlane, a well- 
known South Sea firm. There was a dock strike in 
Sydney at the time, but with a "blackboy" crew on 
board, the Janet got away, carrying a full complement 
of officers and engineers, and the trio to whom Island 
Nights' Entertainments was afterwards dedicated — 
Harry Henderson, one of the partners; Ben Hird, 
the supercargo; and "Jack" Buckland, the living 
original of Tommy Haddon in The Wrecker. 

Unwelcome guests though they had been, no sooner 
had they started than they met with the greatest 
kindness and cordiality from every one on board, and 
when they reached Auckland the invalid was himself 
again. They left that port under sealed orders, but 
were not yet clear of the lighthouse before some fire- 
works, left in Buckland's berth, set his cabin on fire. 
The saloon was filled with dense smoke, and a rosy 
glow. "Let no man say I am unscientific," wrote 



270 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

Stevenson. "When I ran, on the alert, out of my 
stateroom, and found the main cabin incarnadined 
with the glow of the last scene of a pantomime, I 
stopped dead. 'What is this?' said I. 'This ship is 
on fire, I see that; but why a pantomime?' And I 
stood and reasoned the point, until my head was so 
muddled with the fumes that I could not find the 
companion. By singular good fortune, we got the 
hose down in time and saved the ship, but Lloyd lost 
most of his clothes, and a great part of our photo- 
graphs was destroyed. Fanny saw the native sailors 
tossing overboard a blazing trunk; she stopped them 
in time, and behold, it contained my manuscripts." 

After this episode all went well; the steamer put in 
to Apia, and stayed there long enough to enable the 
party to visit their new property and see what progress 
had been made. After that she went to the east and 
to the north, calling at three-and-thirty low islands, 
including the Ellice, Gilbert and Marshall groups; 
their stay in almost every case was limited to a few 
hours, and, as Stevenson wrote on this cruise, " hack- 
ney cabs have more variety than atolls." They saw 
their friend King Tembinok' again, and received a 
welcome from him almost too pathetic to be hearty. 
He had been ill, and the whole island had been at- 
tacked by measles, a disaster which was apparently 
attributed by the victims to the sale of their "devil- 
box." In the centre of the big house was a circular 
piece of "devil- work" in the midst of a ring of white 
shells, and the worship of " Chench," the local deity 
had obviously received an impetus from recent events. 

The altered conditions of navigation were a great 



SOUTH SEA CRUISES 271 

interest to Stevenson, and he was never weary of ad- 
miring the captain's skill in handling the steamer, one 
specimen of which he has recorded in the account of 
his first visit to a pearl-shell island, such as, to his 
great disappointment, he had failed to visit from 
Fakarava. 

"Nearly two years had passed before I found my- 
self in the trading steamer Janet Nicoll, heading for 
the entrance of Penrhyn or Tongareva. In front, 
the line of the atoll showed like a narrow sea wall of 
bare coral, where the surges broke; on either hand 
the tree-tops of an islet showed some way off: on one, 
the site of the chief village; the other, then empty, but 
now inhabited, and known by the ill-omened name of 
Molokai. We steamed through the pass and were 
instantly involved amidst a multiplicity of coral 
lumps, or horse's heads, as they are called by sailors. 
Through these our way meandered; we would have a 
horse's head athwart the bow, one astern, one upon 
either board; and the tortuous fairway was at times 
not more than twice the vessel's beam. The Janet 
was, besides, an iron ship; half the width of the 
Pacific severed us from the next yard of reparation; 
one rough contact, and our voyage might be ended, 
and ourselves consigned to half a year of Penrhyn. 
On the topgallant forecastle stood a native pilot, used 
to conning smaller ships, and unprepared for the re- 
sources of a steamer; his cries rang now with agony, 
now with wrath. The best man was at the bridge 
wheel; and Captain Henry, with one hand on the 
engine signal, one trembling towards the steersman, 
juggled his long ship among these dangers, with the 



272 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

patient art of one fitting up a watch, with the swift 
decision of a general in the field. I stood by, thrilling 
at once with the excitement of a personal adventure 
and the admiration due to perfect skill. 

" We were presently at anchor in a singular berth, 
boxed all about; our late entrance, our future exit 
not to be discovered; in front the lagoon, where I 
counted the next day upwards of thirty horses' heads 
in easy view; behind, the groves of the isle and the 
crowded houses of the village. Many boats lay there 
at moorings: in the verandah, folk were congregated 
gazing at the ship; children were swimming from the 
shore to board us; and from the lagoon, before a gal- 
lant breeze, other boats came skimming homeward. 
The boats were gay with white sails and bright paint; 
the men were clad in red and blue, they were gar- 
landed with green leaves or gay with kerchiefs; and 
the busy, many-coloured scene was framed in the ver- 
dure of the palms and the opal of the shallow sea. 

" It was a pretty picture, and its prettiest element, 
the coming of the children. Every here and there we 
saw a covey of black heads upon the water. . . . Soon 
they trooped up the side-ladder, a healthy, comely 
company of kilted children; and had soon taken post 
upon the after-hatch, where they sat in a double row, 
singing with solemn energy." 

But on the whole Stevenson did not benefit greatly 
by the voyage. The heat of the steamer, driven be- 
fore the wind, was often intolerable; he had another 
hemorrhage, and remained languid and unfit for work. 
On the return journey the Janet turned off to New 
Caledonia, and thence went direct to Sydney. Ste- 



SOUTH SEA CRUISES 273 

venson, however, landed at Noumea, where he spent 
a few days by himself, observing the French convict 
settlement, and learning something of the methods of 
dealing with natives. 

He followed his wife and stepson to Sydney, 
whence Mr. Osbourne left for England, finally to 
arrange their affairs, and bring out the furniture 
from Skerry vore for the "yet unbuilt house on the 
mountain." 

All idea of this journey had been given up by Ste- 
venson himself in the course of the past voyage, and 
indeed, having reached Sydney, he was confined to his 
room in the Union Club, and left it only to return to 
Samoa. From this time forth, although he formed 
various projects, never realised, of seeing his friends, 
and especially Sidney Colvin, in Egypt, Honolulu, or 
Ceylon, he never, so far as I know, again looked for- 
ward to setting foot upon his native shores. 

With his wife he left for Apia, and on their arrival 
they camped in gipsy fashion, in the four-roomed 
wooden house, which was all, except a trellised 
arbour, that had yet been erected on the property. 
Here for the next six months they lived alone with 
one servant, until the ground was further cleared and 
the permanent house built. 

Into the details of Stevenson's life at this time there 
is no need to go; it was a period of transition, and it 
is sufficiently described in the Vailima Letters. Most 
of his material difficulties were crowded into it; but 
even from them he derived a great deal of enjoyment. 
There were daily working on the land a number of 
labourers, partly Samoans, partly natives of other 



274 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

groups. After a while, as soon as the lie of the ground 
could be more clearly seen, the site of the new house 
was selected on a plateau a couple of hundred yards 
higher up the hill, and the building itself was begun 
by white carpenters. 

This was the only time their food-supply ever ran at 
all short; but after their experiences in schooners and 
on low islands, they found little to complain of, as 
they felt that if it ever came to the worst, two miles 
off there was always an open restaurant. Their one 
servant was a German ex-steward, a feckless, kindly 
creature, who seemed born with two left hands, but 
was always ready to do his best. But the less compe- 
tent the servant, the more numerous and miscellane- 
ous were the odd jobs which devolved upon his 
master and mistress. 

Thus in the meantime Stevenson's own work went 
on under great disadvantages. This was the time 
when he saw most of the virgin forest, and his solitary 
expeditions and the hours spent in weeding at the 
edge of the "bush" were not without effect upon his 
writing. 

In January 1 891, he left his wife in sole charge and 
went to Sydney to meet his mother, who was to arrive 
there from Scotland on her way to Samoa. The shaft 
of the Lubeck broke when she was near Fiji, at the 
worst of seasons and in the most dangerous of waters; 
but it was patched up with great skill, and, under sail 
and to the astonishment of the whole port, she ar- 
rived at her destination only four days late. Ste- 
venson as usual "fell sharply sick in Sydney," but was 
able to go on board the Lubeck again and convoy his 



SOUTH SEA CRUISES 275 

mother to her new home. The house, after all, was 
not ready to receive her, and, having taken her first 
brief glimpse of Samoa, she returned to the Colonies 
for another couple of months. 

Stevenson then accompanied Mr. Harold Sewall, 
the American Consul- General, upon a visit to Tu- 
tuila, the easternmost island of the group, now 
added to the territory of the United States. 

Here they spent three weeks, partly by the shores 
of the great harbour of Pagopago, partly on an at- 
tempt to reach the islands of Manu'a in a small 
schooner, and partly in circumnavigating Tutuila by 
easy stages in a whale-boat. It was the best view 
Stevenson ever had of the more remote Samoans in 
their own homes, and the scenery and the life at- 
tracted him more than ever. Fortunately he kept a 
diary, from which I have taken a few character- 
istic passages: — 

"Pagopago 

"The island at its highest point is nearly severed in 
two by the long-elbowed harbour, about half a mile in 
width, cased everywhere in abrupt mountain-sides. 
The tongue of water sleeps in perfect quiet, and laps 
round its continent with the flapping wavelets of a 
lake. The wind passes overhead; day and night 
overhead the scroll of trade-wind clouds is unrolled 
across the sky, now in vast sculptured masses, now in 
a thin drift of debris, singular shapes of things, pro- 
tracted and deformed beasts and trees and heads and 
torsos of old marbles, changing, fainting, and vanish- 



276 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

ing even as they flee. Below, meanwhile, the har- 
bour lies unshaken and laps idly on its margin; its 
colour is green like a forest pool, bright in the shal- 
lows, dark in the midst with the reflected sides of 
woody mountains. 

"Right in the wind's eye, and right athwart the 
dawn, a conspicuous mountain stands, designed like 
an old fort or castle, with naked cliffy sides and a 
green head. In the peep of the day the mass is out- 
lined dimly; as the east fires, the sharpness of the 
silhouette grows definite, and through all the chinks 
of the high wood the red looks through, like coals 
through a grate. From the other end of the har- 
bour, and at the extreme of the bay, when the sun is 
down and night beginning, and colours and shapes at 
the sea-level are already confounded in the greyness 
of the dusk, the same peak retains for some time a 
tinge of phantom rose. 

" Last night I was awakened before midnight by the 
ship-rats which infest the shores and invade the 
houses, incredible for numbers and boldness. I went 
to the water's edge; the moon was at the zenith; vast 
fleecy clouds were travelling overhead, their borders 
frayed and extended as usual in fantastic arms and 
promontories. The level of their flight is not really 
high, it only seems so; the trade- wind although so 
strong in current, is but a shallow stream, and it is 
common to see, beyond and above its carry, other 
clouds faring on other and higher winds. As I 
looked, the skirt of a cloud touched upon the summit 
of Pioa, and seemed to hang and gather there, and 
darken as it hung. I knew the climate, fled to 



SOUTH SEA CRUISES 277 

shelter, and was scarce laid down again upon the 
mat, before the squall burst. In its decline, I heard 
the sound of a great bell rung at a distance; I did 
not think there had been a bell upon the island. I 
thought the hour a strange one for the ringing, but I 
had no doubt it was being rung on the other side at 
the Catholic Mission, and lay there listening and 
thinking, and trying to remember which of the bells 
of Edinburgh sounded the same note. It stopped al- 
most with the squall. Half an hour afterwards, an- 
other shower struck upon the house and spurted 
awhile from the gutters of the corrugated roof; and 
again with its decline the bell began to sound, and 
from the same distance. Then I laughed at myself, 
and this bell resolved into an eavesdrop falling on a 
tin close by my head. All night long the flaws con- 
tinued at brief intervals. Morning came, and showed 
mists on all the mountain-tops, a grey and yellow 
dawn, a fresh accumulation of rain imminent on 
the summit of Pioa, and the whole harbour scene 
stripped of its tropic colouring and wearing the ap- 
pearance of a Scottish loch. 

" And not long after, as I was writing on this page, 
sure enough, from the far shore a bell began indeed 
to ring. It has but just ceased, boats have been pas- 
sing the harbour in the showers, the congregation is 
within now, and the mass begun. How very differ- 
ent stories are told by that drum of tempered iron! 
To the natives a new, strange, outlandish thing: to 
us of Europe, redolent of home; in the ear of the 
priests, calling up memories of French and Flemish 
cities, and perhaps some carved cathedral and the 



278 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

pomp of celebrations; in mine, talking of the grey 
metropolis of the north, of a village on a stream, of 
vanished faces and silent tongues. 

"The Bay of Oa 

"We sailed a little before high- water, and came 
skirting for some while along a coast of classical land- 
scapes, cliffy promontories, long sandy coves divided 
by semi-independent islets, and the far- withdrawing 
sides of the mountain, rich with every shape and 
shade of verdure. Nothing lacked but temples and 
galleys; and our own long whale-boat sped (to the 
sound of song) by eight nude oarsmen figured a piece 
of antiquity better than perhaps we thought. No 
road leads along this coast; we scarce saw a house; 
these delectable inlets lay quite desert, inviting seiz- 
ure, and there was none like Keats' Endymion to hear 
our snowlight cadences. On a sudden we began to 
open the bay of Oa. At the first sight my mind was 
made up — the bay of Oa was the place for me. We 
could not enter it, we were assured; and being entered 
we could not land; but a little gentle insistence pro- 
duced a smiling acquiescence, and the eight oars be- 
gan to urge us slowly into a bay of the JEneid. Right 
overhead a conical hill arises; its top is all sheer cliff of 
a rosy yellow, stained with orange and purple, bristled 
and ivied with individual climbing trees; lower down 
the woods are massed; lower again the rock crops 
out in a steep buttress, which divides the arc of beach. 
The boat was eased in, we landed and turned this 
way and that like fools in a perplexity of pleasures; 



SOUTH SEA CRUISES 279 

now some way into the wood towards the spire, but 
the woods had soon strangled the path — in the Sa- 
moan phrase, the way was dead — and we began to 
flounder in impenetrable bush. Now along the beach; 
it was grown upon with crooked, thick-leaved trees 
down to the water's edge. Our landing and the bay 
itself had nearly turned my head. 'Here are the 
works of all the poets passim? I said, and just then 
my companion stopped. c Behold an omen/ said 
he, and pointed. It was a sight I had heard of 
before in the islands, but not seen: a little tree such 
as grows sometimes on infinitesimal islets on the 
reef, almost stripped of its leaves, and covered in- 
stead with feasting butterflies. These, as we drew 
near, arose and hovered in a cloud of lilac and 
silver-grey. . . . 

"All night the crickets sang with a clear trill of 
silver; all night the sea filled the hollow of the bay 
with varying utterance; now sounding continuous 
like a millweir, now (perhaps from further off) with 
swells and silences. I went wandering on the beach, 
when the tide was low. I went round the tree before 
our boys had stirred. It was the first clear grey of 
the morning; and I could see them lie, each in his 
place, enmeshed from head to foot in his unfolded 
kilt. The Highlander with his belted plaid, the Sa- 
moan with his lavalava, each sleep in their one vest- 
ure unfolded. One boy, who slept in the open under 
the trees, had made his pillow of a smouldering brand, 
doubtless for the convenience of a midnight cigarette; 
all night the flame had crept nearer, and as he lay 
there, wrapped like an oriental woman, and still 



2 8o LIFE OF STEVENSON 

plunged in sleep, the redness was within two hand- 
breadths of his frizzled hair. 

"I had scarce bathed, had scarce begun to enjoy 
the fineness and the precious colours of the morning, 
the golden glow along the edge of the high eastern 
woods, the clear light on the sugar-loaf of Maugalai, 
the woven blue and emerald of the cone, the chuckle 
of morning bird-song that filled the valley of the 
woods when upon a sudden a draught of wind came 
from the leeward and the highlands of the isle, rain 
rattled on the tossing woods; the pride of the morn- 
ing had come early, and from an unlooked-for side. 
I fled for refuge in the shed; but such of our boys as 
were awake stirred not in the least; they sat where 
they were, perched among the scattered boxes of our 
camp, and puffed at their stubborn cigarettes, and 
crouched a little in the slanting shower. So good a 
thing it is to wear few clothes. I, who was largely 
unclad — a pair of serge trowsers, a singlet, woollen 
socks, and canvas shoes; think of it — envied them in 
their light array. 

" Thursday. — The others withdrew to the next vil- 
lage. Meanwhile I had Virgil's bay all the morning 
to myself, and feasted on solitude, and overhanging 
woods, and the retiring sea. The quiet was only 
broken by the hoarse cooing of wild pigeons up the 
valley, and certain inroads of capricious winds that 
found a way hence and thence down the hillside and 
set the palms clattering; my enjoyment only dis- 
turbed by clouds of dull, voracious, spotted, and not 
particularly envenomed mosquitoes. When I was 
still, I kept Buhac powder burning by me on a stone 



SOUTH SEA CRUISES 281 

under the shed, and read Livy, and confused to-day 
and two thousand years ago, and wondered in which 
of these epochs I was flourishing at that moment; 
and then I would stroll out, and see the rocks and the 
woods, and the arcs of beaches, curved like a whorl in 
a fair woman's ear, and huge ancient trees, jutting 
high overhead out of the hanging forest, and feel the 
place at least belonged to the age of fable, and awaited 
iEneas and his battered fleets. 

"Showers fell often in the night; some sounding 
from far off like a cataract, some striking the house, 
but not a drop came in. . . . At night a cry of a wild 
cat-like creature in the bush. Far up on the hill one 
golden tree; they say it is a wild cocoa-nut: I know 
it is not, they must know so too; and this leaves me 
free to think it sprang from the gold bough of Proser- 
pine. 

"The morning was all in blue; the sea blue, blue 
inshore upon the shallows, only the blue was name- 
less; the horizon clouds a blue like a fine pale por- 
celain, the sky behind them a pale lemon faintly 
warmed with orange. Much that one sees in the 
tropics is in water-colours, but this was in water- 
colours by a young lady." 

The mention of Livy on the last page recalls a curi- 
ous circumstance, and raises besides the question of 
Stevenson's classical studies. 

A year or two later he told me that he had read 
several books of Livy at this time, but found the style 
influencing him to such an extent that he resolved to 
read no more, just as in earlier days he had been 



282 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

driven to abandon Carlyle. Mr. Gosse has recorded 
that Walter Pater in turn refused to read Stevenson 
lest the individuality of his own style might be affected, 
but it is more curious to find Stevenson himself at so 
late a stage fearing the influences of a Latin author. 

As to his classics, he was ignorant of Greek, and 
preferred the baldest of Bonn's translations to more 
literary versions that might come between him and the 
originals. His whole relation to Latin, however, was 
very curious and interesting. He had never mastered 
the grammar of the language, and to the end made the 
most elementary mistakes. Nevertheless, he had a 
keen appreciation of the best authors, and, indeed, I 
am not sure that Virgil was not more to him than any 
other poet, ancient or modern. From all the quali- 
ties of the pedant he was, of course, entirely free. 
Just as he wrote Scots as well as he was able, "not 
caring if it hailed from Lauderdale or Angus, from 
the Mearns or Galloway," but if he had ever heard a 
good word, he "used it without shame," so it was 
with his Latin. Technicalities of law and the vo- 
cabulary of Ducange were admitted to equal rights 
with authors of the Golden Age. 

Latin no doubt told for much in the dignity and 
compression of his style, and in itself it was to him — 
as we see in his diary — always a living language. But 
as an influence, Rome counted to him as something 
very much more than a literature — a whole system 
of law and empire. 

From this expedition he returned to Apia in an 
open boat, a twenty-eight hours' voyage of sixty-five 



SOUTH SEA CRUISES 283 

miles, on which schooners have before now been lost. 
But for the journey and the exposure Stevenson was 
none the worse. " It is like a fairy-story that I should 
have recovered liberty and strength, and should go 
round again among my fellow-men, boating, riding, 
bathing, toiling hard with a wood-knife in the forest." 

Before the end of April the family were installed in 
the new house, and in May they were reinforced not 
only by the elder Mrs. Stevenson, but also by Mrs. 
Strong and her boy from Sydney, who thenceforward 
remained under Stevenson's protecting care. 

His wanderings were now at an end, and he was to 
enter upon a period of settled residence. Stevenson 
has been generally regarded as a tourist and an out- 
side observer in Samoa, especially by those who least 
knew the Pacific themselves. It must always be borne 
in mind that before Stevenson settled down for the 
last three and a half years of his life in his house of 
Vailima, he had spent an almost equal length of time 
in visiting other islands in the Pacific. On his travels 
he enjoyed exceptional opportunities of gathering in- 
formation, and in general knowledge of the South 
Seas, and of Samoa in particular, he was probably at 
the time of his death rivalled by no more than two or 
three persons of anything like his education or intelli- 
gence. 



CHAPTER XV 

VAILIMA— 1891-94 

"We thank Thee for this place in which we dwell; for the 
love that unites us; for the peace accorded to us this day, for 
the hope with which we expect the morrow; for the health, 
the work, the food, and the bright skies that make our lives de- 
lightful; for our friends in all parts of the earth and our friendly 
helpers in this foreign isle. . . . Give us courage and gaiety and 
the quiet mind. Spare to us our friends, soften to us our ene- 
mies. Bless us, if it may be, in all our innocent endeavours. 
If it may not, give us strength to encounter that which is to 
come, that we be brave in peril, constant in tribulation, temper- 
ate in wrath, and in all changes of fortune and down to the 
gates of death, loyal and loving one to another." — R. L. S., 
Vailima Prayers. 

THE new house and the augmentation of his 
household marked the definite change in Ste- 
venson's life, which now assumed the charac- 
ter that it preserved until the end. In private his 
material comfort was increased, and he was delivered 
from most of the interruptions to which his work had 
lately been subject; in public it now became manifest 
that he was to be a permanent resident in Samoa, en- 
joying all the advantages of wealth and fame, and the 
consideration conferred by numerous retainers. 

To the world of his readers, and to many who never 
read his books, his position became one of extreme 
interest. He was now living, as the legend went, 
among the wildest of savages, who were clearly either 
always at war or circulating reports of wars immedi- 

284 



VAILIMA 285 

ately to come; settled in a house, the splendour and 
luxury of which were much exaggerated by rumour; 
dwelling in a climate which was associated with all 
the glories of tropic scenery and vegetation, and also, 
in the minds of his countrymen at all events, with a 
tremendous cataclysm of the elements, from which 
the British navy had emerged with triumph. It was 
little wonder that, as Mr. Gosse wrote to him, " Since 
Byron was in Greece, nothing has appealed to the 
ordinary literary man so much as that you should be 
living in the South Seas." 

The island of Upolu on which Stevenson lived was 
the central and most important of the three principal 
islands composing the group to which the collective 
name of Samoa is applied. It is some five-and-forty 
miles in length and about eleven in average breadth. 
The interior is densely wooded, and a central range of 
hills runs from east to west. Apia, the chief town, is 
situated about the centre of the north coast, and it 
was on the hills about three miles inland that Ste- 
venson made his home. 

The house and clearing lay on the western edge of 
a tongue of land several hundred yards in width, situ- 
ated between two streams, from the westernmost of 
which the steep side of Vaea Mountain, covered with 
forest, rises to a height of thirteen hundred feet above 
the sea. On the east, beyond Stevenson's boundary, 
the ground fell away rapidly into the deep valley of 
the Vaisigano, the principal river of the island. On 
the other hand, the western stream, formed by the 
junction of several smaller water-courses above, ran 
within Stevenson's own ground, and, not far below 



286 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

the house, plunged over a barrier of rock with a fall 
of about twelve feet into a delightful pool, just deep 
enough for bathing and arched over with orange- 
trees. A few hundred yards lower down it crossed his 
line with an abrupt descent of forty or fifty feet. It 
was from this stream and its four chief tributaries 
that Stevenson gave to the property the Samoan 
name of Vailima, or Five Waters. 

The place itself lay, as has been said, some three 
miles from the coast, and nearly six hundred feet 
above sea-level. From the town a good carriage- 
road, a mile in length, led to the native village of 
Tanugamanono, where the Stevensons had lodged 
upon their first arrival. Beyond that point a road 
was afterwards made, but for a time there was noth- 
ing but the roughest of footpaths, which led across 
the hills to the other side of the island through a 
forest region wholly uninhabited, all the native vil- 
lages being either by the sea, or within a short dis- 
tance of the coast. 

East and west and south of the clearing the land 
was covered with thick bush, containing many scat- 
tered lofty forest trees, like those judiciously spared 
by the axemen where they did not endanger the new 
house. Here and there in the forest was a great ban- 
yan with branching roots, covering many square 
yards of surface, and affording a resting-place for the 
flying-foxes, the great fruit-eating bats, which sally 
forth at dusk with slow, heavy flight, like a straggling 
company of rooks, making for the coast. Even to 
the north, most of the ground between Vailima and 
Apia had to some extent been cultivated, yet along 



VAILIMA 287 

the "road" the trees grew close and high, and on a 
dark night the phosphorescence gleamed on fallen 
logs amid the undergrowth, twinkling and flickering 
to and fro, like the hasty footsteps of the witches the 
Samoans believed it to be. On the estate itself the 
route lay by the lane of limes, a rugged, narrow, wind- 
ing path, that seemed, as Stevenson said, "almost as 
if it was leading to Lyonesse, and you might see the 
head and shoulders of a giant looking in." But this 
part of the track was afterwards cut off by the Ala 
Loto Alofa, the Road of the Loving Heart, built by 
the Mataafa chiefs in return for Tusitala's kindness 
to them in prison. 

The house of Vailima was built of wood through- 
out, painted a dark green outside, with a red roof of 
corrugated iron, onj which the heavy rain sounded 
like thunder as it fell and ran off to be stored for 
household purposes in the large iron tanks. The 
building finally consisted of two blocks of equal size, 
placed, if I may use a military phrase in this connec- 
tion, in echelon. It was the great defect of the house 
in its master's eyes that from a strategical point of 
view it was not defensible. It fulfilled, however, 
many of the requirements both of structure and more 
especially of position which he had laid down for his 
ideal house. 

After December 1892 the downstairs accommoda- 
tion consisted of three rooms, a bath, a storeroom and 
cellars below, with five bedrooms and the library up- 
stairs. On the ground-floor, a verandah, twelve feet 
deep, ran in front of the whole house and along one 
side of it. Originally there had been a similar gal- 



288 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

lery above in front of the library, but it so darkened 
that room as to make it almost useless for working. 
Stevenson then had half of the open space boarded 
in, and used it as his own bedroom and study, the re- 
mainder of the verandah being sheltered, when neces- 
sary, by Chinese blinds. The new room was thus a 
sort of martin's nest, plastered as it were upon the 
outside of the house; but except for being somewhat 
hot in the middle of the day, it served its purpose to 
perfection. A small bedstead, a couple of bookcases, 
a plain deal kitchen table and two chairs were all its 
furniture, and two or three favourite Piranesi etch- 
ings and some illustrations of Stevenson's own works 
hung upon the walls. At one side was a locked rack 
containing half-a-dozen Colt's rifles for the service of 
the family in case they should ever be required. One 
door opened into the library, the other into the ve- 
randah: one window, having from its elevation the 
best view the house afforded, looked across the lawns 
and pasture, over the tree- tops, out to the sapphire sea, 
while the other was faced by the abrupt slope of Vaea. 
The library was lined with books, the covers of which 
had all been varnished to protect them from the cli- 
mate. The most important divisions were the shelves 
allotted to the history of Scotland, to French books 
either modern or relating to the fifteenth century, to 
military history, and to books relating to the Pacific. 
At this height the beat of the surf was plainly to be 
heard, but soothing to the ear and far away; other 
noises there were none but the occasional note of a 
bird, a cry from the boys at work, or the crash of a 
falling tree. The sound of wheels or the din of ma- 



VAILIMA 289 

chinery was hardly known in the island: about the 
house all went barefoot, and scarcely in the world 
could there be found among the dwellings of men a 
deeper silence than in Stevenson's house in the forest. 
The chief feature within was the large hall that 
occupied the whole of the ground-floor of the newer 
portion of the house — a room some fifty feet long and 
perhaps five and thirty wide, lined and ceiled with 
varnished redwood from California. Here the mar- 
ble bust of old Robert Stevenson twinkled with ap- 
proval upon many a curiously combined company, 
while a couple of Burmese gilded idols guarded the 
two posts of the big staircase leading directly from 
the room to the upper floor. An old Samoan chief, 
being one day at his own request shown over the 
house, and having seen many marvels of civilisation 
of which he had never dreamed, showed no sign of 
interest, far less of amazement, but as he was depart- 
ing he looked over his shoulder at the two Buddhas 
and asked indifferently: "Are they alive?" In one 
corner was built a large safe, which, being continually 
replenished from Apia, rarely contained any large 
amount of money at a time, but was supposed by the 
natives to be the prison of the Bottle Imp, the source 
of all Stevenson's fortune. In this room hung J. S. 
Sargent's portrait of Stevenson and his wife, Sir 
George Reid's portrait of Thomas Stevenson, two re- 
puted Hogarths which the old gentleman had picked 
up, two or three of R. A. M. Stevenson's best works, 
a picture of horses by Mr. Arthur Lemon, and — 
greatly to the scandal of native visitors — a plaster 
group by Rodin. 



2 9 o LIFE OF STEVENSON 

In front of the house lay a smooth green lawn of 
couch-grass, used for tennis or croquet, and bounded 
on two sides by a hibiscus hedge which, within a 
few months of its planting, was already six feet high 
and a mass of scarlet double blossoms — the favourite 
flowers of the Samoan. 

Immediately behind the mansion lay the wooden 
kitchen and a native house for the cook. A hundred 
yards to one side the original cottage in which Ste- 
venson first lived had been re-erected, to serve up- 
stairs as bedrooms for Mr. Osbourne and myself, 
downstairs for the house boys (i. e., servants), for 
stores, tool-house, and harness-room. 

Upon the other side another native house lay, half- 
way towards the stream. The ground below the 
home fence was all used for pasture; in front, the 
milking-shed occupied the site of the old house; and 
the pig-pen, impregnably fenced with barbed wire, 
lay a couple of hundred yards in the rear. At the 
back also were the old, disused stables, for in later 
days the horses were always kept out at grass in the 
various paddocks, coming up for their feed of corn 
every morning and evening. 1 

1 About 1898, Mrs. Stevenson, being unable to live in Samoa, 
sold to Mr. Kunst, the well-known financier of Vladivostok, the 
house and land of Vailima, reserving only the summit of Vaea. 
In 1900 the islands of Upolu and Savaii passed to Germany by 
treaty, and after Mr. Kunst's death Vailima was acquired by the 
German Government and was used as the governor's residence, a 
purpose for which it was, perhaps, better suited than any other 
house in the island. The trees and lawns, however, and the in- 
ternal appearance of the house had, I understand, been a good 
deal changed by the beginning of 1914. It is sincerely to be hoped 
that the outrage of making a highroad to the tomb, and rendering 
it a picnic resort, will never be tolerated. 

On August 29, 1914, less than a month after the opening of the 



VAILIMA 291 

But even when the house itself was provided, 
its service was the great difficulty. Competent 
and willing white helpers were not to be procured, 
and though there were many natives employed 
in Apia, yet Samoa, less fortunate than India, pos- 
sessed no class of servants ready to minister to a 
white master with skill and devotion for a trifling 
wage. 

At first Stevenson tried European and colonial ser- 
vants. Two German men cooks passed through his 
kitchen: a Sydney lady's-maid brought dissensions 
into the household : a white overseer and three white 
carters came and left, causing various degrees of dis- 
satisfaction. Then Mrs. Stevenson went away for 
a change to Fiji; in her absence the family made a 
clean sweep of the establishment, and Mrs. Strong 
and her brother took the entire charge of the kitchen 
into their own hands with complete success. This 
was of necessity a passing expedient. One day, how- 
ever, Mr. Osbourne found a Samoan lad, with a hi- 
biscus flower behind his ear, sitting on an empty 
packing-case beside the cook-house. He had come, 
it seemed, to collect half a dollar which the native 

Great War, the German Governor of Samoa surrendered to an ex- 
peditionary force despatched by the government of New Zealand, 
which thereupon without bloodshed took control of the islands of 
Upolu and Savaii. 

The island of Tutuila, with the fine deep-water harbour of 
Pagopago (see p. 275), was ceded to the United States in 1900, and 
an American governor and staff have ever since been in residence. 
Their kindly and intelligent treatment of the natives appears to 
have won the affection of the Samoans. 

After Mrs. Stevenson left the islands, she made her home in Cali- 
fornia, first in San Francisco, and at a ranch at Gilroy, and later 
at Santa Barbara. She survived her husband nearly twenty years 
and died ("Alas, that she is dead!") on February 20, 1914. 



292 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

overseer owed him, and he was quite content to wait 
for several hours until his debtor should return. In 
the meantime he was brought into the kitchen, and 
then and there initiated into the secrets of the white 
man's cookery. He was amused, interested, fasci- 
nated, and he plunged enthusiastically into the mys- 
teries of his future profession. Fortunately in Samoa 
cookery was regarded as an art worthy of men's 
hands, and was practised even by high chiefs. The 
new-comer showed great aptitude; Mr. Osbourne 
persuaded him to stay, sent for his chest, and for sev- 
eral days would hardly let him out of his sight. So 
from that time forth Ta'alolo was head cook of Vail- 
ima, soon having a 'boy' under him as scullion, tak- 
ing only a few occasional holidays, and perfecting his 
art by visits to the kitchen of the French priests. In 
time he brought into the household several of his rela- 
tions who were Catholics like himself, and proved the 
best and most trustworthy of all the boys. 

A very few days after my first arrival one of these 
new-comers appeared in the character of assistant 
table-boy, a clumsy, half-developed, rather rustic 
youth, who of course knew no English, a sign that he 
was at any rate free from the tricks of the Apia-bred 
rascal. At the first, Sosimo seemed unlikely material, 
but there was a certain seriousness and resolution 
about him which quickly produced their effect. He 
soon became known as "The Butler," and before long 
was promoted to be head boy in the pantry. From 
the beginning he attached himself to Tusitala with a 
whole-hearted allegiance. He waited on him hand 
and foot, looked scrupulously after his clothes, de- 



VAILIMA 293 

voted special attention to his pony "Jack," and made 
one of the most trustworthy and efficient servants I 
have ever known. When the end came, few if any 
showed as much feeling as Sosimo, and his loyalty to 
his master's memory lasted to the end of his own life. 

These two men were the best; but as I write, I 
recall Leuelu, and Mitaele, and Iopu, and old La- 
faele, and many more, not all such good servants, not 
all so loyal or so honest as those first named, but all 
with many solid merits, many pleasing traits, and a 
genuine personal devotion to Tusitala which pleased 
him as much as many more brilliant qualities. 

The table was fully provided with white napery 
and silver and glass according to the usual English 
custom, as it had prevailed in the house of Stevenson's 
father. The cookery was eclectic and comprised such 
English and American dishes as could be obtained or 
imitated, together with any native food which was 
found palatable. Of the supplies I shall speak later: 
it was the contrast between table and servants that 
was most striking. Nothing could have been more 
picturesque than to sit at an ordinary modern dinner- 
table and be waited on skilfully by a noble barbarian 
with perfect dignity and grace of carriage and man- 
ners hardly to be surpassed, who yet, if the weather 
were warm and the occasion ordinary, had for all his 
clothing a sheet of calico, in which his tattooed waist 
and loins alone were draped. 

The actual house-servants were usually about half 
a dozen in number, two in the kitchen, two or three 
for house and table service; one, Mrs. Stevenson's 
special boy, for the garden and her own general ser- 



294 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

vice, and one more to take charge of the cows and 
pigs. Besides these, there was always a band of 
outside labourers under a native overseer supervised 
by Mr. Osbourne, working on the plantation, varying 
in number, according to the amount of clearing in 
hand, from half-a-dozen to twenty or thirty men. 
The signal for beginning and leaving off their work 
was always given by blowing the " pu," a large conch 
shell, that made a great booming sound that could be 
heard in the farthest recesses of the plantation. 

The great fear of the householder in Samoa used to 
be the dread of war, lest he should wake one morning 
and find that all his servants had been ordered out 
on service by their respective chiefs. By Stevenson's 
intervention the Vailima household staff was gener- 
ally kept at home, but the plantation was several 
times deserted and had to await the restoration of 
peace. 

The government of the household was as far as 
possible on the clan system. "It is something of 
your own doing," Stevenson had written to his mother 
from Bournemouth in 1886, "if I take a somewhat 
feudal view of our relation to servants. ... The 
Nemesis of the bourgeois who has chosen to shut out 
his servants — his "family" in the old Scotch sense — 
from all intimacy and share in the pleasures of the 
house, attends us at every turn. An impossible re- 
lation is created, and brings confusion to all." 

If this were his attitude among the artificial con- 
ditions of England, he was not likely to adopt a more 
modern position in Samoa, where the patriarchal 
stage of society still prevailed. Accordingly from the 



VAILIMA 295 

first he used all opportunities to consolidate the 
household as a family, in which the boys should take 
as much pride and feel as much common interest as 
possible. His ideal was to maintain the relation of a 
Highland chief to his clan, such as it existed before 
the '45, since this seemed to approach most nearly to 
the actual state of things in Samoa at the time, and 
best met the difficulties which beset the relations of 
master and servant in his own day. He adopted the 
Stuart tartan for the Vailima kilt, to be worn on high 
days and holidays; he encouraged the boys to seek 
his help and advice on all matters and was specially 
delighted when they preferred to him such requests 
as to grant his permission to a marriage. 

It must not, however, be supposed that they were 
allowed their own way, or indulged when they mis- 
behaved themselves. On such occasions the whole 
household would be summoned, a sort of "bed of 
justice'' would be held, and sharp reprimands and 
fines inflicted. 

Even with all these servants, the white man was 
separated from the material crises of life by a some- 
what thin barrier, for even the best and most respon- 
sible natives were at times brought face to face with 
emergencies beyond their powers, and had to fall 
back upon their master's help. Such occasions of 
course befell Stevenson most frequently in the early 
days when he was living in the cottage with his wife 
and the white cook. Much of his time was then 
taken up unexpectedly with such pieces of business 
as may be found in the first pages of the Vailima Let- 
ters: in measuring land, rubbing down foundered 



296 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

cart-horses, ejecting stray horses during the night or 
wandering pigs during the day, or even in little house- 
hold tasks which no one else was available to dis- 
charge. In later days his wife and all the family 
were able jealously to prevent such encroachments on 
his time, but during the last two years I can remember 
the master of the house himself helping with delight 
to feed a refractory calf that refused the bottle, driv- 
ing out an angry bull, or doctoring stray natives 
suffering from acute colic or wounded feet, to say 
nothing of chance hours spent in planting or in weed- 
ing the cacao. 

One morning's work stands out conspicuously 
in my memory. A hogshead of claret had, after 
many misadventures, arrived from Bordeaux slightly 
broached, so that it had to be bottled immediately. 
Stevenson feared the effect of the fumes even of the 
light wine upon the natives, so he himself with our aid 
undertook the work. The boys were sent off to the 
stream with relays of bottles to wash while we tapped 
the cask, and the red wine flowed all the morning into 
jugs and basins beneath. It was poured away into 
the bottles, and they were corked and dipped into a 
large pot of green sealing-wax kept simmering on the 
kitchen fire. There seemed not to be any fumes to 
affect us, but the anticipation, and the pressure to get 
done, the novelty of the work, and, above all, Ste- 
venson's contagious enthusiasm, produced a great 
feeling of delight and exhilaration, and made a regu- 
lar vintage festival of the day. Stevenson was in his 
glory, as he always was when he felt that he was doing 
a manual task, and, above all, when he was able to 



VAILIMA 297 

work in concert with others, and give his love of 
camaraderie full scope. 

And throughout his life, for Stevenson to throw 
himself into any employment which could kindle his 
imagination was to see him transfigured. The little 
boy who told himself stories about his football came 
to weed in Samoa, and was there ever such an account 
of weeding since the world began ? He drove stray 
horses to the pound, and it became a Border foray. 
He held an inquiry into the theft of a pig, and he 
bore himself as if he were the Lord President in the 
Inner House. But on the memorable day when he 
and I rode through the outposts of Mataafa's troops, 
and for the first time in his life Louis saw armed men 
actually taking the field, even his own words hardly 
serve to express his exhilaration and outburst of 
spirit: " So home a little before six, in a dashing squall 
of rain, to a bowl of kava and dinner. But the im- 
pression on our minds was extraordinary; the sight 
of that picket at the ford, and those ardent, happy 
faces, whirls in my head; the old aboriginal awoke 
in both of us and nickered like a stallion. . . . War 
is a huge entrainement; there is no other temptation 
to be compared to it, not one. We were all wet, we 
had been about five hours in the saddle, mostly riding 
hard; and we came home like schoolboys, with such a 
lightness of spirits, and I am sure such a brightness of 
eye, as you could have lit a candle at." 

When any special entertainment was to be given, a 
dinner-party or a large luncheon, the whole family of 
course set to work to see that everything was prop- 
erly done. Some saw to the decoration of the table 



298 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

or the polishing of the silver, or the blending of the 
preliminary " cocktail"; Stevenson loved to devote 
himself to the special cleaning of what he called in 
the Scots phrase "the crystal," and his use of the 
glass-cloth on decanter and wine-glasses would have 
rejoiced the heart of an expert. 

As for the food, when there was a large household 
to be supplied and a daily delivery from Apia had 
been arranged, there was no great difficulty in cater- 
ing, apart from the expense. The meat came from 
the butcher, and the bread from the baker, the gro- 
ceries, if needed, from the grocer, and the washing 
from the washerwoman, as in less romantic communi- 
ties. There was a large storeroom, plentifully sup- 
plied from the Colonies and from home. There were 
generally three or four cows in milk, and a supply of 
pigs and chickens being reared for the table. The 
herd of wild cattle sold with the estate certainly did 
not exist within many miles of its boundaries, though 
I have seen tracks which showed that the animals 
were not mythical but led a real existence in another 
part of the island, whither they had betaken them- 
selves. But if there were no four-footed creatures, 
birds were plentiful. Large pigeons were brought in 
from the surrounding woods, especially at the season 
when they had been feeding on the wild nutmeg-trees, 
The only game to be obtained was an occasional mal- 
lard, a rail, or a gallinule, unless the manume'a be 
reckoned, the one surviving species of dodo, a bird 
about the size of a small moorhen, which has only 
recovered its present feeble powers of flight since cats 
were introduced into the island. I have found it in 



VAILIMA 299 

the woods above Vailima, but we never shot it our- 
selves, and its dark flesh was as rare upon the table 
as it was delicious. Prawns came from the stream, 
and now and again some sea-fish might be sent up 
from the coast, where it was abundant. Vegetables 
were hardly to be bought, but a piece of swampy 
ground half a mile from the house was turned into a 
patch for taro, the finest of all substitutes for the 
potato. Bananas and bread-fruit-trees were planted, 
and Mrs. Stevenson developed under her own super- 
vision a garden in which all sorts of new plants were 
tried, and most of them successfully adopted. Cocoa- 
nuts, oranges, guavas, and mangoes grew already on 
the estate or in a paddock just below, which was 
taken on lease ; and many more of the most improved 
kinds of these trees were planted and throve. The 
common hedges on the estate were composed of limes, 
the fruit being so abundant that it was used to scour 
the kitchen floors and tables, and citrons were of so 
little account that they rotted on the trees. Several 
acres were planted with pineapples, which, after only 
a little cultivation, equalled the best varieties of their 
kind. There was also an unrivalled plantation of 
kava, the shrub whose powdered root yields the 
Samoan national drink. Wherever the ground was 
cleared, the papaw or mummy-apple at once sprang 
up and bore its wholesome and insipid fruit. Cape 
gooseberries were mere weeds; soursops, the large 
granadillas and avocado pears, lemons and plums, 
egg-plants and sweet potatoes all did well in that rich 
volcanic soil and that marvellous climate. Nothing 
failed of tropical products except the ambrosial man- 



3 oo LIFE OF STEVENSON 

gosteen, the capricious child of the Malay Peninsula. 
The cacao, of which frequent mention is made in the 
Vailima Letters, grew and came into bearing; but the 
broken and rocky surface of the ground made it diffi- 
cult to keep clean, and also caused the plantation to 
be very straggling and irregular. 

But, in truth, if Stevenson were unfitted for a South 
Sea trader, he was even less likely to be the successful 
manager of a plantation run for his own profit. No 
Samoan had either need or desire to work regularly 
for any sum less than seven dollars a month and his 
food, but these wages and the amount of work ren- 
dered for them were quite incompatible with the idea 
of competition in the markets of the civilised world. 
Stevenson fed his men, paid them regularly in cash, 
and not in trade, and neither worked them in bad 
weather nor discharged them for sickness, if he 
thought it was brought on by exposure in the course 
of doing work for him. If all this be accounted only 
common fair dealing, he had besides an unusual 
measure of that generosity he has attributed to others, 
"such as is possible to those who practise an art, 
never to those who drive a trade." At any rate, the 
little plantation never paid its way, and never seri- 
ously promised to become self-supporting. 

The temperature was generally between 85 and 
90 Fahrenheit at noon, and always fell during the 
darkness to 70 , or less. I have never seen it at any 
time lower than 62 nor higher than 95 in the shade. 
But in the early morning the lower temperature 
strikes one by contrast as bitterly cold, and so acutely 
had Stevenson felt it in his cottage in the bush that 



VAILIMA 301 

two large fireplaces with a brick chimney were built 
in the big house, though after a while they were never 
used. It was the contrast that was trying, even at 
higher temperatures. "The thermometer is only 
8o°," wrote Stevenson, "and it's as cold as charity 
here. You would think it warm. What makes these 
differences? Eighty degrees is a common tempera- 
ture with us, and usually pleasant. And to-day it 
pricks like a half frost in a wet November." Through 
the dry season from April to October a fresh trade- 
wind blew during the day from the south-east, and 
during the other months, although heavy rain was 
more frequent, the fine days were beyond words de- 
lightful. "The morning is, ah! such a morning as 
you have never seen; heaven upon earth for sweet- 
ness, freshness, depth upon depth of unimaginable 
colour, and a huge silence broken at this moment 
only by the far-away murmur of the Pacific and the 
rich piping of a single bird." 

The rainfall is said to average about one hundred 
and thirty inches during the year, but as five or six 
inches fall during a really wet twenty-four hours, it 
does not argue many wet days, and, moreover, show- 
ers fall freely during the so-called dry season. The 
climate, of course, is not bracing, but it is probably 
as little debilitating as that of any place lying in the 
same latitude and no further removed from the sea- 
level. 

There is a total absence of tropical and malarial 
fevers, which must be due to the fact that the germ- 
bearing mosquito either does not exist, or finds no 
virus to convey. And this is the more remarkable, 



3 o2 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

because in the Western limits of the Pacific the fevers 
of New Guinea and New Britain are the deadliest of 
their kind. 

Samoa, in common with the rest of Polynesia, is 
fortunate in this also, that it contains nothing more 
venomous than a few centipedes, and even these 
have been accidentally imported with merchandise. 

Stevenson's ordinary manner of life was this: He 
would get up at six, or perhaps earlier, and begin 
work. From my bed in the cottage I commanded a 
view of his verandah, and often and often I have 
waked in the chill early dawn to see through the win- 
dow the house with the mass of Vaea towering behind 
it: in the midst there would be the one spot of bright 
light where Tusitala, the only other person awake 
of all the household, was already at his labours. 
Down below, the monotonous beating of the surf 
could be heard; above, through the chill air, there 
rang the repeated call of the manu-iao, " the bird of 
dawn" — a succession of clear phrases recalling with a 
difference the notes at once of the thrush and of the 
blackbird. The sky brightened; the lamp was ex- 
tinguished; the household began to stir; and about 
half-past six a light breakfast was taken to the mas- 
ter. He continued to work by himself, chiefly making 
notes, until Mrs. Strong, her housekeeping finished, 
was able to begin his writing, generally soon after 
eight. Then they worked till nearly noon, when the 
whole household met for the first time at a substantial 
meal of two or three courses in the large hall. 

Afterwards there would be talk, or reading aloud, 




Stevenson at Vailima 



VAILIMA 303 

or a game of piquet; a bowl of kava was always made 
early in the afternoon, and, having been served once, 
was then left in the verandah. When Austin Strong 
was at Vailima, his " Uncle Louis " would at some 
time during the day give him a history lesson, and also 
began to teach him French; for the boy's education 
was undertaken by the household at large. Later in 
the afternoon there might follow a visit to Apia, or a 
ride, or a stroll into the woods or about the plantation, 
or a game of croquet or tennis, until close upon six 
o'clock, when the dinner was served. Then followed 
a round game at cards, or reading, or talk as before, 
or music, if there were any visitor in the house able to 
play the piano or sing, for in the end Stevenson had 
altogether given up the practice of his flute. Soon 
after eight on an ordinary night the members of the 
household had generally dispersed to their rooms, to 
go to bed at what hour they chose. The master of 
the house used, I think, to do most of his reading at 
these times, but usually he was in bed soon after ten, 
if not actually before. 

His own favourite exercise was riding, and though 
for the dozen years before he came to the Pacific he 
had probably never mounted a horse, he was an ex- 
cellent rider. His light weight (I doubt if he ever 
actually weighed eight stone) served him in good 
stead, and Jack, the Samoan-bred pony which he 
bought in 1890, carried him well. The first and un- 
flattering mention describes Jack as "a very plain 
animal, dark brown, but a good goer, and gentle, ex- 
cept for a habit of shying and sitting down on his tail, 
if he sees a basket in the road, or even a bunch of 



3 o 4 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

bananas. However, he will make a very good make- 
shift." He reigned alone in Stevenson's affection, 
and, never having been mounted again, passed a 
peaceful old age in a friend's paddock in Upolu. 

Except on the roads of the Neutral Territory and 
in the big German plantation, the ground was not 
very suitable for horses, and a dozen miles was usu- 
ally the limit of an afternoon's excursion. 

I have called this the ordinary mode of life, but it 
was subject to endless variations. If Stevenson were 
in a hot fit of work with a story just begun or some 
new episode just introduced, he could do nothing and 
think of nothing else, and toiled all day long; for if 
there were no interruptions, and no other pressing 
business, he would at such times return to his labours 
for all the afternoon and evening. On the other 
hand if he were ailing or disinclined for writing, he 
would stop work some time before luncheon. But 
almost at any time he was at the mercy of visitors, 
white or brown, and the matters which were referred 
to him for advice or settlement were endless. Mr. 
Osbourne has well described them: — 

"He was consulted on every imaginable subject. 
. . . Government chiefs and rebels consulted him 
with regard to policy; political letters were brought 
to him to read and criticise; his native following 
was so widely divided in party that he was often kept 
better informed on current events than any one per- 
son in the country. Old gentlemen would arrive in 
stately procession with squealing pigs for the { chief- 
house of wisdom,' and would beg advice on the cap- 
itation tax or some such subject of the hour; an 



VAILIMA 305 

armed party would come from across the island with 
gifts, and a request that Tusitala would take charge 
of the funds of the village and buy the roof-iron for a 
proposed church. Parties would come to hear the 
latest news of the proposed disarming of the country, 
or to arrange a private audience with one of the 
officials; and poor war-worn chieftains, whose only 
anxiety was to join the winning side, and who wished 
to consult with Tusitala as to which that might be. 
Mr. Stevenson would sigh sometimes as he saw these 
stately folk crossing the lawn in single file, their at- 
tendants following behind with presents and baskets, 
but he never failed to meet or hear them.' , 

During his mother's first period of residence at 
Vailima, Stevenson used every morning at eight to 
have prayers at which the whole household were 
present. A hymn was sung in Samoan from the Mis- 
sion book, a chapter read verse by verse in English 
and two or three prayers were read in English, ending 
with the Lord's Prayer in Samoan. But it was im- 
possible to assemble before anybody had begun work, 
and so much delay was caused by summoning the 
household from their various labours, that the prac- 
tice was reserved in the end for Sunday evenings 
only, when a chapter of the Samoan Bible was read, 
Samoan hymns were sung, and a prayer, written by 
Stevenson himself for the purpose, was offered in 
English, concluding, as always, with the native ver- 
sion of the Lord's Prayer. 

There is one feature in Stevenson's residence in 
Samoa which has probably never yet been mentioned, 
and that is the constancy with which he stayed at 



3 o6 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

home in Vailima. After his visit to Tutuila in 1891 
I know of only two occasions during his life in Upolu 
— the two separate nights which he passed at Malie — 
when he did not sleep either at Apia or in his own 
house. This was largely a precaution for the sake of 
health, since there was little good accommodation 
outside those two places, but it entirely prevented his 
becoming personally acquainted with many interest- 
ing spots in the islands and many of the Samoans 
whom he would have been glad to meet. 

Thus he never crossed the central range of his own 
island, the track over which passed near his house; he 
never visited Lanuto'o, the crater lake, set in the 
midst of the forest among the hills, only a dozen miles 
away, or the stone circle known as "The House of the 
Cuttle-fish," in a neighbouring glen, the crater islet of 
Apolima, or (to cut short my list) even any of the 
lovely villages along the south-western shore. 

Now and again, for some special reason, generally 
connected with the arrival of the mail steamer, he 
would sleep in Apia, but on all ordinary occasions 
he preferred to return home. At these times he 
liked the lamps left burning in his absence, that 
he might ride up the dark road and out into the 
solitary and silent woods, there to find the house 
lighted up to welcome his return even at the dead 
of night. 

At Vailima visitors were always coming and going. 
All white residents who chose to appear were made 
welcome. The American Chief- Justice Ide and his 
family; Herr Schmidt, the President; the Consuls; 
the Land Commissioners, especially his friend Bazett 



VAILIMA 307 

Haggard; the Independent and Wesleyan missiona- 
ries; the French Bishop, the priests and sisters; the 
doctor, the magistrate, the postmaster, the surveyor ; 
the managers of firms and their employes, English 
or German; and traders from all parts of the islands: 
such were some of the residents who might arrive at 
any time. To them might be added passing visitors, 
spending a week or two in Samoa between two steam- 
ers, or remaining several months to see the islands 
more thoroughly. The latter, if not actually staying 
in the house, were yet sure to be frequently invited 
to Vailima. J. M. Barrie and Rudyard Kipling, to 
their own bitter regret, too long deferred the visits 
for which their host was so eager; but of those who 
came, the Countess of Jersey, John Laf arge the artist, 
and Henry Adams the historian are the most familiar 
names. 

And perhaps most frequent and certainly not least 
welcome were the officers and men of the warships, of 
which Apia saw only too many for her peace in those 
troubled days. The Germans toiled but seldom up 
the hill, the American vessels came rarely to the is- 
lands; but in the four years of Stevenson's residence 
at least eight British men-of-war entered the harbour, 
and one — his favourite Curaqoa — not only came most 
frequently, but stayed the longest, spending in the 
group seven out of the last eight months of his life. 
The experience which I think gave him more pleasure 
than any other in that time was his visit as a guest 
in the Curaqoa to the outlying islets of Manu'a. 

In wardroom and gunroom some were, of course, 
closer friends than others, but I think there was not 



308 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

an officer in the ship, from the captain to the youngest 
midshipman, who was not definitely a friend. The 
most intimate were perhaps Dr. Hoskyns, Hugo 
Worthington, 1 the marine officer, Lieutenant (since 
Captain) Eeles; but the road leading from Apia 
became known as the "Curacoa track," and if any 
one of the officers was placed upon the sick-list, he 
was speedily invited to stay in the house and try the 
effect of the climate of Vailima. With the men also, 
petty officers, bluejackets, and marines, Stevenson's 
relations were of the happiest. "A most interesting 
lot of men," he wrote of another ship; "this educa- 
tion of boys for the Navy is making a class, wholly 
apart — how shall I call them ? — a kind of lower-class 
public-school boy, well-mannered, fairly intelligent, 
sentimental as a sailor." 

He had doubted at Honolulu if the navies of the 
world held such another ship as the Cormorant, and 
the answer came to his door. 

There was also the merchant service : the captains 
and officers of the mail-steamers, both of the San 
Francisco vessels and the local New Zealand boats. 
"Captain Smith of the Taviuni" as Lloyd Osbourne 
wrote, "once paid a visit to Vailima with some 
friends. On his road home he passed the 'Ala Loto 
Alofa' on which the chiefs were then working like 
good fellows. He asked — and was told — the reason 
of their task; and the bluff, hearty old seaman at 
once insisted on getting off his horse and felling one 
of the trees himself. ' / must be in that, too/ he said, 

1 Lieut.-Col. H. Worthington was in command of the marines on 
H. S. M. Iron Duke, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe's flagship in 1914-5. 



VAILIMA 309 

with a genuine emotion; and spent half an hour 
swinging an axe." 

Other and stranger visitors would turn up from the 
various islands which the family had visited. As 
Stevenson wrote to Mr. Barrie : " Another thing you 
must be prepared for — and that is the arrival of 
strange old shell-back guests out of every quarter of 
the island world, their mouths full of oaths for which 
they will punctiliously apologise; their clothes un- 
mistakably purchased in a trade room, each probably 
followed by a dusky bride. These you are to expect 
to see hailed with acclamation and dragged in as 
though they were dukes and duchesses. For though 
we may be out of touch with ' God knows what,' we 
are determined to keep in touch with appearances 
and the Marquesas." 

The bust of old Robert Stevenson, looking down 
upon the hall, must have been reminded again and 
again of the breakfasts in Baxter's Place, and his 
"broad-spoken, home-spun officers." 

The departure of one of these old traders was most 
characteristic, and would, hardly, I think, occur in 
just the same way outside the South Seas. He had 
come from his island, he had made his way to Vailima 
and renewed his friendship; he had enjoyed himself 
and received such kindness and consideration as per- 
haps he did not often get. When he rose to take his 
leave, "Now don't you move," he said, "don't one 
of you move. Just let me take a last look of you all 
sitting there on that verandah, and I shall have that 
always to think of, when I'm away." 

It was Stevenson's intimate knowledge of this class 



310 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

which made him particularly anxious to heal as far 
as possible the unnecessary division between them 
and the missionaries. 

His personal relations with the Protestant mis- 
sionaries in Samoa were most pleasant. He was a 
loyal and generous friend to every man and woman 
among them, told them quite plainly whenever he 
disagreed with them or disapproved of their line of 
conduct, and was a most stimulating and liberal in- 
fluence on their work. It is almost invidious to sin- 
gle out names, but the Rev. W. E. Clarke and his 
wife were his closest and most thorough-going friends 
among the residents. Outside Samoa, the Rev. George 
Brown, the Rev. F. E. Lawes of Savage Island, and 
the Rev. F. Damon of Honolulu held high places in 
his affection and regard; but for James Chalmers, 
"Tamate" of New Guinea, he felt a kind of hero- 
worship, a greater admiration probably than he felt 
for any man of modern times except Charles Gordon. 

His appreciation of the Mission he showed not only 
by giving his influence and his money, but also by 
offering his services to take a Bible-class of young 
half-caste lads on Sunday afternoons. Nothing was 
more irksome to him than a periodical engagement. 
The boys, it is gathered, were quite impenetrable, and 
the process was that of cutting blocks with a razor; 
but for several months Stevenson held firmly to his 
undertaking, and in the end it was dropped only 
from some urgent external cause, and never resumed. 

With the Catholics Stevenson was on equally pleas- 
ant, but quite different terms. His interest in Mo- 
lokai, even apart from Father Damien, always made 



VAILIMA 311 

his heart warm towards the priests and Catholic 
sisters; the accidental circumstance that all his best 
boys at Vailima belonged to the Church of Rome 
strengthened the connection. For the Bishop he had 
a real appreciation: "a superior man, much above 
the average of priests": "Monseigneur is not unim- 
posing; with his white beard and his violet girdle he 
looks splendidly episcopal, and when our three wait- 
ing lads came one after another and kneeled before 
him in the big hall, and kissed his ring, it did me 
good for a piece of pageantry." 

Of the spiritual merits of their work he was of 
course in no position to judge; but he always had a 
special admiration for the way in which they identi- 
fied themselves with the natives and encouraged all 
native habits and traditions at all compatible with 
Christianity. Above all things he welcomed the fact 
that the influence of the chiefs was increased in- 
stead of weakened by their efforts. He agreed with 
them that it was better to concentrate their forces on 
people of rank, than to impose such a democracy as 
that of some of the Protestant societies, for he felt that 
the salvation of Samoa lay in the chiefs, and that 
it was unfortunate that all white influence except 
that of the Catholics was in the line of diminishing 
their authority. 

Thus the priests and the sisters from the Savalalo 
convent were always welcome guests, and not the less 
from the fact that French was the usual medium of 
intercourse. 

Besides open house at Vailima, there also were 
many special entertainments, both those given in the 



312 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

house, and those shared with others or given by them 
in return in Apia. In addition to ordinary lunches 
or dinners, it was Stevenson's greatest delight to or- 
ganise any festivity in which the natives could have a 
share, the entertainment of a man-of-war's band, a 
feast on the completion of a Samoan house, or, above 
all, the great banquet given in native fashion to cele- 
brate his own birthday. In Apia public balls were 
not infrequent; Stevenson became a willing pupil in 
the hands of his stepdaughter, and thenceforward 
took his part in the dances with delight. 

But the balls in themselves deserve a passing word, 
for, nowhere since the world began, can the juxta- 
position of incongruous elements have reached so high 
a point. Almost every one in Apia, without regard 
for social station, was invited, and all were welcome. 
Diplomatists and naval officers, traders and bar-keep- 
ers, clerks and mechanics, all came; and the resi- 
dents brought their wives and daughters, white, half- 
caste, or whole Polynesian. On one point only was 
etiquette inexorable — no Samoan man could hope 
for admission, unless some elderly and august chief 
were introduced as a spectator. But invitations were 
issued to such native girls as could dance and were 
otherwise suitable, and the "maid of a village" might 
frequently there be seen, dancing away in a native 
dress even more elaborate and scanty than those of 
her white sisters. And not only was social exclusive- 
ness waived, but hostilities, public and private, were 
suspended at these remarkable entertainments. One 
night Stevenson found himself vis-a-vis with Chief- 
Justice Cedercrantz in a square dance, at a time 



VAILIMA 313 

when either was eagerly compassing the removal 
of the other from the island. "We dance here in 
Apia," he wrote, "a most fearful and wonderful 
quadrille; I don't know where the devil they fished 
it from, but it is rackety and prancing and embrace- 
atory beyond words; perhaps it is best defined in 
Haggard's expression of a gambado." And of his 
rival: "We exchanged a glance and then a grin; the 
man took me in his confidence; and through the re- 
mainder of that prance, we pranced for each other." 

Another time, during the fiercest moments of An- 
glo-German animosity, Mr. Osbourne, by the adroit 
use of a bow and arrow, secured the hand of the Ger- 
man Consul's wife for a cotillon; and at a Fourth of 
July dance given by the American Vice-Consul, 
all that gentleman's enemies might have been seen 
joining hands and dancing round him, while they 
sang, "For he's a jolly good fellow." One ineffable 
family indeed carried out the rules of the game with 
so much rigour as to accept partners with whom they 
were not on speaking terms, and then to dance and 
speak not a word. But for the most part people 
entered readily into the spirit of the thing, and ill- 
will was left outside, while not only the lion and 
the lamb but the rival beasts of prey all frolicked 
happily together. 

There is one difficulty to which I have not yet 
alluded — the question of language. Stevenson had, 
as he wrote, on entering the Pacific, " journeyed out 
of that comfortable zone of kindred languages, where 
the curse of Babel is so easy to be remedied," but 
the obstacle proved much less than he had antici- 



3 H LIFE OF STEVENSON 

pated. It is true that in Samoa few of the natives 
speak or really understand anything but their own 
tongue, but except for the fact that this has no analo- 
gies with any European speech, it is not very difficult 
to acquire for practical purposes. To it he soon ad- 
dressed himself, and over the study of Samoan he 
spent a good deal of pains, even taking regular lessons 
from the Rev. S. J. Whitmee of the London Mission, 
the best Samoan scholar in the islands. In that 
language there is a special vocabulary for addressing 
or mentioning high chiefs, which is naturally used on 
all solemn occasions and in all important correspond- 
ence. Stevenson mastered this sufficiently to under- 
stand it when it was spoken well, and not only to be 
able to write it with facility, but even to satisfy his 
own fastidious requirements in composing letters. 
The everyday speech he used for all household pur- 
poses, and could understand it himself without diffi- 
culty. But when there came a voluble rustic from a 
remote district, some small chief perhaps, who sat 
and "barked," as his unfortunate hearer said, in 
either dialect about matters beyond Tusitala's ken, 
the result was confusion. In matters of importance, 
where it was of the highest urgency that Stevenson 
should not be misunderstood, a good and really 
trustworthy interpreter was hardly to be procured 
outside the Mission, and from anything approaching 
politics the missionaries for the most part wisely held 
aloof. But this difficulty was gradually solved by Mr. 
Osbourne, who learned both usages very thoroughly, 
and spoke them in the end with fluency and ease. 
There are few matters in which English readers 



VAILIMA 315 

have taken less interest than the political history of 
Samoa, even when it was written by Stevenson him- 
self. Nevertheless, if I were to omit all reference 
to these affairs and the criticisms which Stevenson 
passed upon them, it would be supposed that I was 
letting judgment go against him by default. I there- 
fore give only the briefest possible description of the 
government as it was from 1889 to 1894. 

Throughout the period of Stevenson's residence in 
Samoa, the government of the islands was controlled 
by a Treaty, entered into at Berlin in 1889, between 
America, England, and Germany. Under this the 
native king was recognised by these three Great 
Powers, by whom two new white officials were also 
appointed — a Chief- Justice, receiving ^1200 a year 
out of the Samoan treasury, and a President of the 
Municipal Council, who was to be paid ^1000 a year 
by the Municipality and also act as adviser to the 
king. A Land Commission of three representatives, 
one appointed by each of the three Powers, was to 
investigate all equitable claims of foreigners to the 
ownership of land in Samoa, and after the registration 
of such titles as were valid, none but a native might 
acquire the freehold of any part of Samoan territory. 

The American and German Consuls- General and 
the British Consul retained their jurisdiction, and pre- 
served much of the prestige they had enjoyed in the 
days before the Berlin Treaty, when the Consular 
Board had been the chief controlling power in Sa- 
moa. 

The British Consul, also, as a Deputy-Commis- 
sioner, had very despotic powers over all British sub- 



3 i6 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

jects under the Western Pacific Orders in Council, 
issued under the Pacific Islanders' Protection Act 
(38 and 39 Vict. c. 51). 

It is impossible to say whether the system thus 
founded could ever have worked satisfactorily among 
so many contending interests, and at so great a dis- 
tance from the paramount Governments, seated as 
these were at Berlin, London, and Washington, even 
if two competent Treaty officials, possessed of ex- 
perience and common sense, had been promptly sent 
out to the scene of their duties. But there was undue 
delay, the wrong men were chosen, and the system 
was doomed. 

The Chief- Justiceship was, failing the unanimous 
choice of the three Powers, given by the King of 
Sweden to a Swedish Assistant- Judge, Mr. Conrad 
Cedercrantz, while Baron Senfft von Pilsach, a Ger- 
man Regierungs- Assessor, was appointed by the Pow- 
ers to be President of the Municipal Council. 

For more than two years the pair drew their sala- 
ries, and discharged what they conceived to be their 
duties, in a fashion which is perfectly incredible until 
it is studied by the "cold light of consular reports." 
Stevenson was finally kindled to indignation by the 
outrage of the dynamite — a proposal to blow up some 
Samoan chiefs imprisoned for a political offence of no 
great gravity, if any attempt were made by their peo- 
ple to rescue them from jail. He wrote to The Times 
a series of letters which at first were generally dis- 
believed, but were afterwards confirmed in every im- 
portant detail that was made known. 

The fight was keen, for the two Treaty officials did 



VAILIMA 317 

their best, as Stevenson believed, to have him de- 
ported; but the end was certain, whether it was due 
to the diplomatists or The Times, and the pair de- 
parted for other scenes of activity. But the evil had 
been done, and such opportunity as their successors 
had was frustrated by the arbitrary and vacillating 
interference of the consuls. 

Stevenson took the chair at one public meeting in 
Apia, and apart from this, his local interference in 
politics was limited to a few formal visits to native 
chiefs. Once, however, by an accident it nearly took 
the most startling form of intervention possible. The 
king was all but shot dead in the large hall at Vailima 
by Mrs. Stevenson in her husband's presence. Sud- 
denly one day in 1894 Malietoa came up without 
warning to pay a secret visit of reconciliation to 
Tusitala, attended only by a black-boy interpreter. 
In the course of the visit he happened to mention his 
wish for a revolver; Stevenson immediately went to 
the big safe in the corner of the room and produced 
one, which he emptied of the cartridges, and handed 
to his wife. Mrs. Stevenson found that there was 
something wrong with the trigger and tried it several 
times. Four times it clicked, the king leaned over in 
front to examine it, and then some unaccountable 
impulse made her inspect the pistol again. In the 
next chamber lay a cartridge which would inevitably 
have sent its charge into the king's brain. The smile 
and wave of the hand with which Malietoa greeted 
and dismissed the discovery were worthy of a stronger 
monarch and of a far greater kingdom. Had the 
bullet gone to its mark, it is idle to speculate on what 



318 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

would have happened, but it is clear at any rate that 
Stevenson could no longer have found a home in 
Samoa. 

On most occasions he confined himself to giving his 
advice when it was asked, or when he saw any reason- 
able chance of its being accepted. I need hardly say 
that he never contributed one farthing or one farth- 
ing's worth towards any arming or provisioning of 
the natives, nor did he ever take any step or give any 
counsel or hint whatsoever that could possibly have 
increased the danger of war or diminished the hopes 
of a peaceful settlement. 

■ If he had been asked what concern he had in the 
affairs of Samoa, or why he did not leave them in the 
hands of the consuls whose business they were, he 
would probably have answered that it was his busi- 
ness to vindicate the truth and to check misgovern- 
ment and oppression wherever he found them; that 
he had good reason to distrust the consuls; that Sa- 
moa was a remote spot where public opinion was 
helpless; and that the trustworthy means of publish- 
ing the real state of its affairs to the civilised world 
were few. And in support of this he would have in- 
stanced the case of the dynamite, the very name of 
which has been suppressed in all the blue-books and 
white-books of the three Powers; and the fact that 
the only newspaper in the island had been secretly 
purchased with the public money, printing-press, type 
and all, for the benefit of his opponents. Finally, 
that which he would never have pleaded for his own 
advantage may be urged for him in a disinterested 
sense : he had adopted Samoa as his country, and her 



VAILIMA 319 

enemies were his enemies, and he made her cause 
his own. It is difficult for people reading their news- 
papers at home to realise the entire difference of cir- 
cumstances and conduct, and I freely confess that 
until I arrived in Samoa and saw the conditions for 
myself upon the spot, I favoured the easier course 
of laissez faire. 

It would give a false impression, however, if I neg- 
lected to mention the excitement of politics, which in 
Europe is denied to all but the few diplomatists be- 
hind the scenes. In Apia every one knew the chief 
persons involved, both white and Samoan, and knew 
all, and much more than all, that was passing be- 
tween them. As a young Irishman quoted by Ste- 
venson said: "I never saw so good a place as this 
Apia; you can be in a new conspiracy every day." 
And to Stevenson himself at first the interest was 
absorbing: "You don't know what news is, nor what 
politics, nor what the life of man, till you see it on so 
small a scale and with your liberty on the board for 
stake." But so futile and so harassing were these 
concerns, that before long he was glad to leave them 
on one side as far as he could, and devote himself 
once more to literature. He soon found politics " the 
dirtiest, the most foolish, and the most random of 
human employments": and for the diplomatists — 
"You know what a French post-office or railway 
official is? That is the diplomatic card to the life. 
Dickens is not in it; caricature fails." 

Of the exact amount of influence that Stevenson 
possessed with the natives, it is hard to speak with any 
certainty. From what I have said of his stationary 



3 2o LIFE OF STEVENSON 

life it will be evident that there were many Samoans 
who had no opportunity of coming into contact 
with him at all; but in spite of this drawback 
his prestige and authority were gradually spread- 
ing, and his kindness and fidelity in misfortune 
produced a real effect upon the native mind. As 
Mr. Whitmee, who knew the islands well, said: 
" There have been paragraphs in British papers rep- 
resenting Mr. Stevenson as being something like 
a king in Samoa. I believe I have seen it stated 
that he might have been king of the islands had 
he wished. That was simple nonsense." (And, I 
may add, nonsense which irritated Stevenson more 
than almost any other idle rumour.) "But he was 
respected by the natives as a whole, and by many 
he was beloved." 

During these three years his work was as consider- 
able in amount and as diverse as ever. He turned to 
the South Seas and wrote The Island Nights 1 Enter- 
tainments : stirred by the wrongs of Samoa, he wrote 
against time A Footnote to History. 1 He laboured 
long to carry out a contract with Messrs. McClure 
for letters on his voyages, of which in the end he sent 

1 The appeal to the Kaiser with which this book concludes should 
not be forgotten. "Germany has shown she can be generous; it 
now remains for her only to forget a natural but certainly 
ill-grounded prejudice. . . . The future of Samoa should be 
thus in the hands of a single man on whom the eyes of Europe 
are already fixed. It is to him — to the sovereign of the wise 
Stuebel and the loyal Brandeis — that I make my appeal." But 
the only answer was the burning of the printed but as yet un- 
issued edition of the book in Germany, and a heavy penalty in 
the form of contribution to a charity, paid by Baron Tauchnitz 
the publisher. 



VAILIMA 321 

some seventy to America. The material used in these 
was afterwards to be embodied in a monumental book 
on the Pacific, but even the letters (published later 
as "In the South Seas") proved refractory, and the 
great work was never even begun. His new experi- 
ences were also utilized in The Wrecker and The Ebb 
Tide which had been already started in collaboration 
with Mr. Osbourne and were now brought to a con- 
clusion. The Fables, too, begun in England, received 
additions, and most of the Songs of Travel were writ- 
ten in these years. But it was still in his stories of 
Scotland that his best work was done. St. Ives, it is 
true, was begun as a short story and never became a 
good long one, but Catriona, written in four months, 
was a spirited sequel to the fine beginning of Kid- 
napped. As usual with his work most of these books 
as well as A Family of Engineers, the history of his 
family, were taken up from time to time and again 
laid down, while fresh schemes were always taking 
shape. 

It so happened one afternoon at Vailima that I was 
the only person available, and Louis carried me off to 
debate the claims of two stories which he then un- 
folded — one that was to be called Sophia Scarlet, and 
the other which afterwards became Weir of Herrnis- 
ton. Either on that day or about that time I remem- 
ber very distinctly his saying to me: "There are, so 
far as I know, three ways, and three ways only, of 
writing a story. You may take a plot and fit char- 
acter to it, or you may take a character and choose 
incidents and situations to develop it, or lastly — you 
must bear with me while I try to make this clear" — 



322 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

(here he made a gesture with his hand as if he were 
trying to shape something and give it outline and 
form) — "you may take a certain atmosphere and get 
action and persons to express and realise it. I'll give 
you an example — The Merry Men. There I began 
with the feeling of one of those islands on the west 
coast of Scotland, and I gradually developed the 
story to express the sentiment with which that coast 
affected me." 

It was on this last scheme that Sophia Scarlet had 
been conceived, the atmosphere being that of a large 
plantation in Tahiti, such as Mr. Stewart's had been 
at Atimono twenty years before. It may be that the 
method did not lend itself readily to an effective 
sketch of the plot; the draft of the beginning of the 
story seems to me better than I thought the outline 
at the time. But in any case there could be no 
hesitation in the choice. Weir of Hermiston was be- 
gun, and for three or four days Stevenson was in 
such a seventh heaven as he has described: he 
worked all day and all evening, writing or talking, 
debating points, devising characters and incidents, 
ablaze with enthusiasm, and abounding with energy. 
No finished story was, or ever will be, so good as 
Weir of Hermiston, shown to us in those days by the 
light of its author's first ardour of creation. 

Besides the works already mentioned, and the let- 
ters to The Times, as well as his private correspon- 
dence, there were endless other schemes, for the most 
part projected and perhaps not even begun, never, 
certainly, brought near to completion. He wrote 
to Charles Baxter: "My schemes are all in the air, 



VAILIMA 323 

and vanish and reappear again like shapes in the 
clouds." So likewise to Miss Boodle : " I have a pro- 
jected, entirely planned, love-story — everybody will 
think it dreadfully improper, I'm afraid — called Can- 
onmills. And I've a vague, rosy haze before me — a 
love-story too, but not improper — called The Rising 
Sun. It's the name of the wayside inn where the 
story, or much of the story, runs; but it's a kind of a 
pun: it means the stirring up of a boy by falling in 
love, and how he rises in the estimation of a girl who 
despised him, though she liked him, and had be- 
friended him; I really scarce see beyond their child- 
hood yet, but I want to go beyond, and make each 
out-top the other by successions : it should be pretty 
and true if I could do it." 

Neither of these was ever written. There was also 
a play for home representation, showing the adven- 
tures of an English tourist in Samoa; and I can re- 
member two more serious schemes which were like- 
wise without result. In the August before he died, he 
drew up with Mr. Osbourne the outline of a history, 
or of a series of the most striking episodes of the In- 
dian Mutiny, to be written for boys, and he sent home 
for the books necessary for its execution. Another 
day he sketched the plan of an English grammar, to 
be illustrated by examples from the English classics. 
These are but a few: the many are unremembered; 
but all alike belong, not to the fleet of masterpieces 
unlaunched, but the larger and more inglorious 
squadron whose keels were never even laid down. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE END— 1894 

"Brief day and bright day 

And sunset red, 
Early in the evening, 

The stars are overhead." 

R. L. S. 

"Wanted Volunteers 
To do their best for two score year si 
A ready soldier, here I stand, 
Primed for Thy command, 
With burnished sword. 
If this be faith, O Lord, 
Help Thou mine unbelief 
And be my battle brief." 

Envoy to No. XXV. of Songs of Travel. 

THE climate of Samoa had apparently an- 
swered the main purpose of preserving Steven- 
son from any disabling attacks of illness, and 
allowing him to lead a life of strenuous activity. " I 
do not ask for health," he had said to his stepson at 
Bournemouth, "but I will go anywhere and live in 
any place where I can enjoy the ordinary existence of 
a human being." And this had now been granted to 
him beyond his utmost hope. 

In all the time he was in Samoa he had but two or 
three slight hemorrhages, that were cured within a 
very few days. The consumption in his lungs was 
definitely arrested, but it seems certain that a struc- 

3 2 4 



THE END 325 

tural weakening of the arteries was slowly and inevi- 
tably going on, although his general health was appar- 
ently not affected. He had influenza at least once; 
occasionally he was ailing, generally with some indefi- 
nite lassitude which was attributed to malaria or 
some other unverirlable cause. In the summer of 
1892, he was threatened with writer's cramp, which 
had attacked him as long ago as 1884. From this 
time forth, however, his stepdaughter wrote to his 
dictation nearly all his literary work and correspon- 
dence, and, thanks to her quickness and unwearying 
devotion, he suffered the least possible inconvenience 
from this restriction of his powers. He had one or 
two threatenings of tropical diseases, which were 
promptly averted; and for several periods, to his own 
intense disgust, he gave up even the very moderate 
quantity of red wine which seemed to be a necessity 
of life to him, and — worst deprivation of all — he 
abandoned at these times the cigarettes which usu- 
ally he smoked all day long. 

But in spite of these occasional lapses, he was able 
to lead an active life, full of varied interests, and the 
amount of work which he did during this period 
would have been satisfactory to less careful writers, 
even if they had done nothing else but follow their 
own profession without any interruption or diversion 
whatever. 

It was his friends and his country that he missed. 
From the day that Sidney Colvin went down the ship's 
side in the Thames, or the day that Will H. Low 
parted from him in New York, Stevenson never again 
saw any one of his old and intimate companions. 



3^6 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

Fortune was against him in the matter. They were 
all busy people, with many engagements and many 
ties, and when at last Charles Baxter was able to start 
for Samoa, he had not yet reached Egypt before the 
blow fell. Nor was this perversity of fortune con- 
fined to his old friends alone; it also affected the 
younger writers with whom, in spite of distance, he 
had formed ties more numerous, and, in proportion 
to their number, more intimate than have ever before 
been established and maintained at any such distance 
by correspondence alone. And it was the more tanta- 
lising, because the paths of several seemed likely to 
lead them past the very island where he lived. So he 
had to content himself as best he might with his mail- 
bag, which, especially in the answers to the Vailima 
Letters j did much to remove for him the drawbacks 
of his isolation and of absence from the centres of 
% literature to which he always looked for praise and 
blame. 

But, besides the loss of intercourse, he, more than 
most men, suffered from another pang. The love of 
country which is in all Scots, and beyond all others lies 
deepest in the Celtic heart, flowed back upon him 
again and again with a wave of uncontrollable emo- 
tion. When the " smell of the good, wet earth " came 
to him, it came "with a kind of Highland touch." A 
tropic shower discovered in him "a frame of mind and 
body that belonged to Scotland, and particularly to 
the neighbourhood of Callander." When he turned 
to his grandfather's life, he was filled with this yearn- 
ing, and the beautiful sentences in which he has de- 
scribed the old man's farewell to " Sumburgh and the 



THE END 327 

wild crags of Skye" were his own valediction to those 
shores. No more was he to "see the topaz and the 
ruby interchange on the summit of the Bell Rock, no 
more to see the castle on its hill or the venerable city 
which he must always think of as his home." As he 
wrote of himself, " Like Leyden I have gone into far 
lands to die, not stayed like Burns to mingle in the 
end with Scottish soil." 

It is not to be wondered that his letters show moods 
of depression which his indomitable spirit prevented 
him from manifesting at the time to those around him, 
and which perhaps beset him most when he turned to 
his correspondence. As has been well said: "He 
was an exile, and though his exile lay in pleasant 
places, he had an exile's thoughts, and these were 
bound to be upper-most when he wrote to his old in- 
timates." 

The difficulty of the life in Samoa was its great ex- 
pense. In 1887, Stevenson had written: "Wealth is 
only useful for two things — a yacht and a string 
quartette. Except for these, I hold that £700 a year 
is as much as anybody can possibly want." But 
though he had neither the music nor the vessel, and 
was now making an income of six or seven times the 
amount mentioned, it was no more than enough to 
meet the cost of his living, and the needs of his gen- 
erosity, while he was occasionally haunted by a fear 
lest his power of earning should come to an end. 

During the period of his residence at Vailima he 
returned but twice to the world of populous cities. 
In the early part of 1893 he paid a visit of several 
weeks to Sydney, and though, as usual there, he was 



328 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

much confined to his room, he derived from the trip a 
good deal of enjoyment. For the first time he realised 
that his fame had reached the Colonies, and though 
no man was ever under fewer illusions upon the 
point, he enjoyed the opportunities it gave him of 
meeting all sorts of people. Artists and Presbyte- 
rian ministers alike vied in entertaining him; at Gov- 
ernment House he was just in time to see the last of 
Lord and Lady Jersey; and by this time there were 
at Sydney a number of friends in whose company he 
delighted, especially Dr. Fairfax Ross and the Hon. 
B. R. Wise. But the event which pleased and cheered 
him most was his meeting at Auckland with the vet- 
eran Sir George Grey, with whom he had more than 
one prolonged and most inspiring discussion upon 
the affairs of Samoa. 

In September 1893, he came up with me to Hono- 
lulu for the sake of the voyage, intending to return 
by the next steamer. After a week spent there I left 
him apparently quite well, and intending to sail for 
Samoa the next day. But in those four-and-twenty 
hours he developed pneumonia, and remained ill at 
Waikiki until his wife's arrival, and they did not reach 
Apia again before November. 

On his return to Samoa several events occurred 
which gave him great pleasure. He had never wear- 
ied in his kindness and generosity towards any of the 
natives who were in trouble, and he was constant in 
seeing to the real needs of the Mataafa chiefs who 
were in prison. These services he rendered to them, 
as he rendered all service, without thought of reward 
or fear of misunderstanding, and it was all the more 



THE END 329 

pleasant to him when the chiefs gave him first an 
elaborate native feast with full honours in the jail 
where they were still confined; and secondly, as soon 
as they were released, came as a mark of gratitude, 
and cleared and dug and completed the roadway 
which thereafter led to his house — the "Ala Loto 
Alofa," the Road of the Loving Heart. It took a num- 
ber of men several weeks to make, and they bore the 
whole labour and the whole cost; it was not prompted 
from outside, and no ulterior motive has ever, so far 
as I am aware, been suggested by anybody to whom 
the circumstances were known. When it was fin- 
ished, there was a solemn returning of thanks, and 
Stevenson's speech, which may be found at the end 
of the fourth volume of the Letters, was his best and 
most outspoken utterance to the people of Samoa. 
In the end of September he wearied of St. Ives 
within sight of its conclusion, and fortunately turned 
again to Weir of Hermiston. It was the third time 
he had taken it in hand, for he would not work at it 
when he felt uncertain of himself. But his insight 
was at its clearest, his touch most sure, and his style, 
as always when he approached Scotland in his novels, 
was at its simplest and best. "He generally makes 
notes in the early morning," wrote Mrs. Strong in her 
diary on September 24, "which he elaborates as he 
reads them aloud. In Hermiston he has hardly more 
than a line or two to keep him on the track, but he 
never falters for a word, but gives me the sentences, 
with capital letters and all the stops, as clearly and 
steadily as though he were reading from an unseen 

book." 



330 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

October and November passed; Stevenson re- 
mained hard at work, and to all appearance in his 
ordinary health. His birthday was celebrated by the 
usual native feast, and on Thanksgiving Day, Novem- 
ber 29, he gave a dinner to all his American friends. 
What remains to tell has been so related by Mr. Os- 
bourne that no other account is possible or to be 
desired. 1 

"He wrote hard all that morning of the last day; 
his half-finished book, Hermiston, he judged the best 
he had ever written, and the sense of successful effort 
made him buoyant and happy as nothing else could. 
In the afternoon the mail fell to be answered; not 
business correspondence — for this was left till later 
— but replies to the long, kindly letters of distant 
friends, received but two days since, and still bright 
in memory. 

"At sunset he came downstairs; rallied his wife 
about the forebodings she could not shake off; talked 
of a lecturing tour to America that he was eager to 
make, £ as he was now so well,' and played a game 
at cards with her to drive away her melancholy. He 
said he was hungry; begged her assistance to help 
him make a salad for the evening meal; and to en- 
hance the little feast, he brought up a bottle of old 
Burgundy from the cellar. He was helping his wife on 
the verandah, and gaily talking, when suddenly he 
put both hands to his head, and cried out, ' What's 

1 1 had left Samoa five weeks before for a long cruise in the Islands, 
and the news first reached me in the Carolines in the following March. 
On November 25th we had sighted the roofs of Vailima from the 
sea, but the future was hidden from us, and we continued on our 
way. 



THE END 331 

that ? ' Then he asked quickly, ' Do I look strange ?' 
Even as he did so he fell on his knees beside her. He 
was helped into the great hall, between his wife and 
his body-servant, Sosimo, losing consciousness in- 
stantly, as he lay back in the armchair that had once 
been his grandfather's. Little time was lost in 
bringing the doctors — Anderson, of the man-of-war, 
and his friend Dr. Funk. They looked at him and 
shook their heads; they laboured strenuously, and 
left nothing undone; but he had passed the bounds 
of human skill. 

"The dying man lay back in the chair, breathing 
heavily, his family about him frenzied with grief, as 
they realised all hope was past. The dozen and 
more Samoans that formed part of the little clan of 
which he was chief sat in a wide semicircle on the 
floor, their reverent, troubled, sorrow-stricken faces 
all fixed upon their dying master. Some knelt on 
one knee, to be instantly ready for any command 
that might be laid upon them. A narrow bed was 
brought into the centre of the room, the master was 
gently laid upon it, his head supported by a rest, the 
gift of Shelley's son. Slower and slower grew his res- 
piration, wider the interval between the long, deep 
breaths. The Rev. Mr. Clarke was now come, an old 
and valued friend, he knelt and prayed as the life 
ebbed away. 

"He died at ten minutes past eight on Monday 
evening the 3rd of December, in the forty-fifth year 
of his age. 

"The great Union Jack that flew over the house 
was hauled down, and laid over the body, fit shroud 



332 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

for a loyal Scotsman. He lay in the hall which was 
ever his pride, where he had passed the gayest and 
most delightful hours of his life, a noble room with 
open stairway and mullioned windows. In it were 
the treasures of his far-off Scottish home; the old, 
carved furniture, the paintings and busts that had 
been in his father's house before him. The Samoans 
passed in procession beside his bed, kneeling and kiss- 
ing his hand, each in turn, before taking their places 
for the long night watch beside him. No entreaty 
could induce them to retire, to rest themselves for the 
painful and arduous duties of the morrow. It would 
show little love for Tusitala, they said, if they did not 
spend their last night beside him. Mournful and 
silent, they sat in deep dejection, poor, simple, loyal 
folk, fulfilling the duty they owed their chief. 

"Sosimo asked, on behalf of the Roman Catholics, 
that they might be allowed to recite the prayers for 
the dead. Till midnight the solemn chants contin- 
ued, the prolonged, sonorous prayers of the Church 
of Rome, in commingled Latin and Samoan. Later 
still, a chief arrived with his retainers, bringing a 
precious mat to wrap about the dead. 

"He, too, knelt and kissed the hand of Tusitala, 
and took his place amid the sleepless watchers. 

"The morning of the 4th of December broke cool 
and sunny, a beautiful day, rare at this season of the 
year. More fine mats were brought, until the Union 
Jack lay nigh concealed beneath them. 

"A meeting of chiefs was held to apportion the 
work and divide the men into parties. Forty were 
sent with knives and axes to cut a path up the steep 



THE END 333 

face of the mountain, and the writer himself led an- 
other party to the summit — men chosen from the im- 
mediate family — to dig the grave on a spot where it 
was Mr. Stevenson's wish that he should lie. Noth- 
ing more picturesque can be imagined than the nar- 
row ledge that forms the summit of Vaea, a place no 
wider than a room, and flat as a table. On either side 
the land descends precipitously; in front lies the vast 
ocean and the surf-swept reefs; to the right and left, 
green mountains rise, densely covered with the pri- 
meval forest. Two hundred years ago the eyes of 
another man turned towards that same peak of Vaea 
as the spot that should ultimately receive his war- 
worn body: Soalu, a famous chief. 

"All the morning, Samoans were arriving with 
flowers; few of these were white, for they have not 
learned our foreign custom, and the room glowed 
with the many colours. There were no strangers on 
that day, no acquaintances; those only were called 
who would deeply feel the loss. At one o'clock a 
body of powerful Samoans bore away the coflin, hid 
beneath a tattered red ensign that had flown above 
his vessel in many a corner of the South Seas. A path 
so steep and rugged taxed their strength to the utmost, 
for not only was the journey difficult in itself, but ex- 
treme care was requisite to carry the coflin shoulder 
high. 

"Half an hour later, the rest of his friends fol- 
lowed. It was a formidable ascent, and tried them 
hard. Nineteen Europeans, and some sixty Samoans, 
reached the summit. After a short rest, the Rev. 
W. E. Clarke read the burial service of the Church 



334 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

of England, interposing a prayer that Mr. Stevenson 
had written and had read aloud to his family only the 
evening before his death: 

"We beseech Thee, Lord, to behold us with 
favour, folk of many families and nations, 
gathered together in the peace of this roof; 
weak men and women, subsisting under the 
covert of Thy patience. 

"Be patient still; suffer us yet a while longer — 
with our broken purposes of good, with our 
idle endeavours against evil — suffer us a 
while longer to endure, and (if it may be) 
help us to do better. Bless to us our ex- 
traordinary mercies; if the day come when 
these must be taken, have us play the man 
under affliction. Be with our friends; be 
with ourselves. Go with each of us to 
rest; if any awake, temper to them the dark 
hours of watching; and when the day re- 
turns, return to us, our sun and comforter, 
and call us up with morning faces and with 
morning hearts — eager to labour — eager to 
be happy, if happiness shall be our portion 
— and if the day be marked for sorrow, 
strong to endure it. 

"We thank Thee and praise Thee; and in the 
words of Him to whom this day is sacred, 
close our oblation. 

"Another old friend, the Rev. J. E. Newell, who 
had risen from a sick-bed to come, made an address 
in the Samoan language. 



THE END 335 

"No stranger's hand touched him. It was his 
body-servant that interlocked his fingers and ar- 
ranged his hands in the attitude of prayer. Those 
who loved him carried him to his last home; even the 
cofiin was the work of an old friend. The grave was 
dug by his own men." 

So there he was laid to rest, and in after time a large 
tomb in the Samoan fashion, built of great blocks of 
cement, was placed upon the grave. On either side 
there is a bronze plate : the one bearing the words in 
Samoan, "The Tomb of Tusitala," followed by the 
speech of Ruth to Naomi, taken from the Samoan 
Bible: 

"Whither thou goest I will go; and where thou lodgest, I 
will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my 
God: where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried." 

At the sides of the inscription were placed a thistle 
and a hibiscus flower. 

Upon the other panel, in English, is his own 
Requiem : 

ROBERT LOUIS 
1850 STEVENSON. 1894 

" Under the wide and starry sky, 
Dig the grave and let me lie. 
Glad did I live and gladly die, 
And I laid me down with a will. 

This be the verse you grave for me; 
Here he lies where he longed to be; 
Home is the sailor, home from sea, 
And the hunter home from the hill" 

After his death the chiefs tabooed the use of fire- 
arms upon the hillside where he lies, that the birds 



336 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

might live there undisturbed, and raise about his 
grave the songs he loved so well. 

The proposal that a memorial pillar should be 
erected on the hill, to serve as a sea-mark, was aban- 
doned. Besides the difficulties of transport, and of 
keeping the summit always clear of trees, there was 
the real danger of the slight but frequent shocks of 
earthquake by which any kind of column would, 
sooner or later, have been overthrown. 



"Thin-legged, thin-chested, slight unspeakably, 
Neat-footed and weak-fingered; in his face — 
Lean, large-boned, curved of beak, and touched with race, 
Bold-lipped, rich-tinted, mutable as the sea, 
The brown eyes radiant with vivacity — 
There shines a brilliant and romantic grace, 
A spirit intense and rare, with trace on trace 
Of passion, impudence, and energy. 
Valiant in velvet, light in ragged luck, 
Most vain, most generous, sternly critical, 
Buffoon and poet, lover and sensualist: 
A deal of Ariel, just a streak of Puck, 
Much Antony, of Hamlet most of all, 
And something of the Shorter-Catechist." 

A Book of Verses, p. 41, by W. E. Henley, 
published by D. Nutt, 1888. 

Of Stevenson's personal aspect and bodily powers it 
may be fitting here to make mention. Of his appear- 
ance the best portraits and photographs give a fair 
idea, if each be considered as the rendering of only 
one expression. The eyes were the most striking fea- 
ture of the face; they were of the deepest brown in 
colour, set extraordinarily wide apart. At most times 
they had a shy, quick glance that was most attractive, 



THE END 337 

but when he was moved to anger or any fierce emo- 
tion, they seemed literally to blaze and glow with a 
fiery light. His hair was fair and even yellow in col- 
our until he was five-and- twenty ; after that it rapidly 
deepened, and in later years was quite dark, but with- 
out any touch of black. When he reached the tropics, 
and the fear of taking cold was to some extent re- 
moved, he wore it short once more, to his own great 
satisfaction and comfort. His complexion was brown 
and always high, even in the confinement of the sick- 
room; the only phrase for it is the " rich- tinted " used 
by W. E. Henley in the spirited and vivid fines which 
he kindly permitted me to quote. 

In height he was about five feet ten, slender in fig- 
ure, and thin to the last degree. In all his move- 
ments he was most graceful : every gesture was full of 
an unconscious beauty, and his restless and supple 
gait has been well compared to the pacing to and fro 
of some wild forest animal. To this unusual and 
most un-English grace it was principally due that he 
was often taken for a foreigner. We have seen that 
Mr. Lang found his appearance at three-and-twenty 
like anything but that of a Scotsman, and the same 
difficulty pursued Stevenson through fife, more espe- 
cially on the Continent of Europe. "It is a great 
thing, believe me," he wrote in the Inland Voyage, 
"to present a good normal type of the nation you be- 
long to"; and, as he says in the same chapter, "I 
might come from any part of the globe, it seems, ex- 
cept from where I do." In France he was some- 
times taken for a Frenchman from some other prov- 
ince; he has recorded his imprisonment as a German 



338 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

spy; and at a later date he wrote: "I have found out 
what is wrong with me — I look like a Pole." 

His speech was distinctly marked with a Scottish 
intonation that seemed to every one both pleasing 
and appropriate, and this, when he chose, he could 
broaden to the widest limits of the vernacular. His 
voice was always of a surprising strength and reso- 
nance, even when phthisis had laid its hand most 
heavily upon him. It was the one gift he really pos- 
sessed for the stage, and in reading aloud he was 
unsurpassed. In his full, rich tones there was a sym- 
pathetic quality that seemed to play directly on the 
heart-strings like the notes of a violin. Mrs. Ste- 
venson wrote: "I shall never forget Louis reading 
Walt Whitman's Out of the cradle endlessly rocking y 
followed by O Captain, my Captain, to a room full 
of people, some of whom had said that Whitman 
lacked sentiment and tenderness. All alike, men and 
women, sat spellbound during the reading, and I 
have never seen any audience so deeply moved." 
Nor, for my part, shall I forget his rendering of the 
Duke of Wellington Ode on the evening after the 
news of Tennyson's death had arrived at Vailima. 

When his attention was given to objects or persons 
his observation was singularly keen and accurate, but 
for the most part his memory for the faces of his 
acquaintances was positively bad. His hearing was 
singularly acute, although the appreciation of the 
exact pitch of musical notes was wanting. But be- 
tween delicate shades of pronunciation he could dis- 
criminate with great precision. I can give an in- 
stance in point. The vowels in Polynesian languages 



THE END 339 

are pronounced as in Italian, and the diphthongs 
retain the sounds of the separate vowels, more or 
less slurred together. Thus it can be understood 
that the difference between ae and ai at the end of a 
word in rapid conversation is of the very slightest, 
and in Samoa they are practically indistinguishable. 
In the Marquesas Stevenson was able to separate 
them. At Vailima one day we were making trial of 
these and other subtleties of sound; in almost every 
case his ear was exactly correct. Nothing more 
shook his admiration for Herman Melville than that 
writer's inability to approximate to the native names 
of the Marquesas and Tahiti : and in his own delicate 
hearing lay perhaps the root of his devotion to style. 



CHAPTER XVII 

R. L. S. 

"Who is it that says most? which can say more 
Than this rich praise — that you alone are you?" 

FOR any who have read the foregoing pages it 
should be unnecessary here to dwell upon the 
sources of many qualities which distinguished 
Stevenson throughout his life, or the degree to which 
they were called forth in turn or affected by the many 
variations of his environment. A Scot born, we have 
seen how Edinburgh and Swanston set the seal upon 
his nationality, and how from father and mother he 
drew diverse elements of temperament and character. 
We have seen the effect of his schooling, such as it 
was, and the prolonged leisure of his boyhood; of the 
influence of his friends and his reading; the results of 
his training as an engineer and as an advocate; of 
his wanderings in France, his breakdown in America, 
and the happiness of his married life. 

In several respects it must be owned that he was 
fortunate. His long preludes and painful apprentice- 
ship would clearly have proved impossible, had it 
been necessary for him to make money at an early 
age, and even the history of his maturity would have 
been materially changed if he had been compelled to 
rely solely upon his writing to meet the expenses of his 
household. His late beginning had, again, this ad- 
vantage: tardy in some ways as he was, he had left 

340 



R. L. S. 341 

behind him the ignobler elements of youth before his 
voice was heard or recognised. The green-sickness 
of immaturity was over, at the worst, only one or two 
touches of self-consciousness remained, and even in 
his earliest published essays there rings out the note 
of high spirit and cheerfulness which issued from the 
sick-room of later years, deceived for a time the most 
penetrating of critics, and was perhaps the best part 
of his message to a world that had fallen on weary 
days. 

In regarding Stevenson, both as man and writer, we 
find that the most unusual fact about him, was the 
coupling of the infinite variety of his character and 
intellect, with the extraordinary degree in which he 
was moved by every thought and every feeling. Few 
men are acted upon by so wide a range of emotions 
and ideas; few men hold even two or three ideas, or 
feel even a few emotions, with nearly as much inten- 
sity as compelled him under all. When we have con- 
sidered both number and degree, we shall find other 
gifts no less remarkable and even more characteristic 
— the unfailing spirit of chivalry and the combina- 
tion of qualities that went to make up his peculiar and 
individual charm. Though it is inevitable thus to 
take him piecemeal and to dwell upon one side at a 
time to the exclusion of the others he so rapidly turned 
upon us, we must never allow this process to efface in 
our minds what is far more essential — the image of 
the living whole. 

I. If I have failed to produce a correct impression 
of his intensef energy, I have quoted him and written 



342 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

to little purpose. The child with his " fury of play"; 
the boy walking by himself in the black night and 
exulting in the consciousness of the bulFs-eye be- 
neath his coat; the lad already possessed with the in- 
vincible resolve of learning to write, which for the time 
overcame the desire of all other action: these were 
but the father of the man. So vehement were his 
emotions, his own breast was too small to contain 
them. He paid a visit at nineteen to a place he 
had not seen since childhood. u As I felt myself on 
the road at last that I had been dreaming of for these 
many days before, a perfect intoxication of joy took 
hold upon me ; and I was so pleased at my own hap- 
piness that I could let none past me till I had taken 
them into my confidence." 

It is useless to go on quoting: through life he did 
the thing he was doing as if it were the one thing in 
the world that was worth being done. I will give but 
one more example, premising that its essence lies in 
its very triviality: the smaller the matter at stake, the 
more surprising is the blaze of energy displayed. One 
day he was talking to a lady in his house at Bourne- 
mouth, at a time when he was recovering from hemor- 
rhage, and visitors and conversation were both strictly 
forbidden. A book of Charles Reade's — Griffith 
Gaunt, I think — was mentioned, and nothing would 
serve Stevenson but that he should run to a cold room 
at the top of the house to get the volume. His visitor 
first tried to prevent it, then refused to wait for his 
return, and was only dissuaded from her resolve by 
being told (and she knew it to be true) that if he 
heard that she had left the house, he would certainly 



IL L. S. 343 

run after her down the drive without waiting for 
either hat or coat. 

"The formal man is the slave of words," he said; 
and as a consequence of his own fiery intensity, no 
man was ever less imposed upon by the formulas of 
other people. His railing against the burgess, for ex- 
ample, was no catchword, but the inmost and original 
feeling of his heart. Consequently, whenever he ut- 
tered a commonplace, it will be usually found that he 
had rediscovered the truth of it for himself, did not 
say it merely because he had heard it from somebody 
else, and generally invested it with some fresh quality 
of his own. Perhaps his most emphatic utterance in 
this respect, and that most resembling his conversa- 
tion in certain moods, is the Lay Morals, all the more 
outspoken because it was never finished for press. It 
abounds in sayings such as these : " It is easy to be an 
ass and to follow the multitude like a blind, besotted 
bull in a stampede; and that, I am well aware, is 
what you and Mrs. Grundy mean by being honest." 
" It is to keep a man awake, to keep him alive to his 
own soul and its fixed design of righteousness, that the 
better part of moral and religious education is di- 
rected; not only that of words and doctors, but the 
sharp ferule of calamity under which we are all God's 
scholars till we die." "Respectability: the deadliest 
gag and wet blanket that can be laid on men." "I 
have only to read books, to think . . . the mass of 
people are merely speaking in their sleep." 

So when he spoke, he spoke direct from his own 
reflection and experience, and when he prayed, he did 
not hesitate to pass beyond the decorous ring-fence 



344 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

supposed to include all permissible objects of prayer; 
he gave thanks for" the work, the food, and the bright 
skies that make our lives delightful," and honestly 
and reverently made his petition that he might be 
granted gaiety and laughter. These instances are 
on the surface, but in spiritual matters he had a rare 
power of leaving on one side the non-essential and 
going straight to the heart of the difficulty, that was 
hardly realised by the world at large. Taine's 
charge against Scott that " he pauses on the threshold 
of the soul" has been renewed against Stevenson. 
For one thing, in spite of his apparent frankness, he 
had a deep reserve on the things that touched him 
most profoundly, and never wore his heart upon his 
sleeve. So far as the criticism applies to his writings, 
it is little less untrue than that which called him " a 
f addling hedonist," and its injustice has been shown 
by Sir Sidney Colvin; so far as it applies to himself, it 
must be met by a contradiction. He was a man who 
had walked in the darkest depths of the spirit, and 
had known the bitterness of humiliation. But in that 
valley — of which he never spoke — he too, like the 
friend whom he commemorates, "had met with 
angels"; he too had "found the words of life." 

To return to his plain speaking, in literature he was 
equally sincere. Sir Walter Scott was for him "out 
and away the king of the romantics." But if a dis- 
cerning estimate of Scott's shortcomings, as well as 
his merits, is desired, it can hardly be found more 
justly expressed in few words than on the last page 
but one of A Gossip on Romance. 

In composition also no one who produced so much 



R. L. S. 345 

has probably ever been so little the victim of the 
stereotyped phrase as Stevenson. A few mannerisms 
he had, no doubt — " it was a beautiful clear night of 
stars" — but they were from his own mint, and it was 
oftenest he himself who first called attention to them. 

For the most part the effect on his writing of the 
ardour of which I am speaking is to be seen in two 
ways — in his diligence and in the intellectual intensity 
of the work produced. If ever capacity for taking 
pains be accounted genius in literature, no one can 
deny the possession of the supreme gift to Stevenson. 
To Mr. lies he wrote, in 1887: "I imagine nobody 
had ever such pains to learn a trade as I had; but I 
slogged at it day in and day out; and I frankly be- 
lieve (thanks to my dire industry) I have done more 
with smaller gifts than almost any man of letters in 
the world." In 1876 he reckoned that his final copy 
involved ten times the actual quantity of writing; in 
1888 the articles for Scribnefs Magazine were written 
seven or eight times; the year before his death he 
told Mr. Crockett that it had taken him three weeks 
to write four-and-twenty pages. His prose works, 
exclusive of his published letters, run to nearly eight 
thousand pages of the Edinburgh Edition — three hun- 
dred words to a page. Nine-tenths of this was written 
within less than twenty years; and there were, be- 
sides, more or less completely conceived, many nov- 
els, stories, essays, histories, biographies, and plays 
which occupied no inconsiderable amount of his at- 
tention within that time. 

The present point, however, is the energy and per- 
severance which prepared and secured the mastery, 



346 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

and in reviewing the amount of Stevenson's finished 
work, neither the quantity sacrificed in the process 
must be forgotten, nor the extreme compression of the 
remainder. His was not the pen that covers page 
after page without an effort, unblotted and uncon- 
densed, but the tool of the man who, in Mr. Kip- 
ling's phrase, " makes most delicate inlay- work in 
black and white, and files out to the fraction of a 
hair." In his own words, the only test of writing that 
he knew was this: "If there is anywhere a thing said 
in two sentences that could have been as clearly and 
as engagingly and as forcibly said in one, then it's 
amateur work." And the main thing in which he 
thought his own stories failed was this: " I am always 
cutting the flesh off their bones." 

Of such material he produced nearly four hundred 
pages a year for twenty years, and of the conditions 
under which most of it was done he wrote to George 
Meredith in 1893: 

"For fourteen years I have not had a day's real 
health; I have wakened sick and gone to bed weary; 
and I have done my work unflinchingly. I have writ- 
ten in bed, and written out of it, written in hemor- 
rhages, written in sickness, written torn by coughing, 
written when my head swam for weakness; and for 
so long, it seems to me I have won my wager and 
recovered my glove. I am better now, have been, 
rightly speaking, since first I came to the Pacific; 
and still, few are the days when I am not in some 
physical distress. And the battle goes on — ill or well, 
is a trifle; so as it goes. I was made for a contest, 
and the Powers have so willed that my battle-field 



R. L. S. 347 

should be this dingy, inglorious one of the bed and 
the physic bottle." 

But besides the energy spent on the work there is 
also the intensity of his intelligence. He had no vast 
memory like Scott's, but he remembered to a most 
unusual extent his own emotions, and sensations, and 
the events of his past life, and what remained in his 
mind preserved its freshness and a lifelike sharpness 
of outline. 

If Stevenson's claim to genius is to be based upon 
any single gift, it is this quality that most deserves 
such recognition, nor can it well be refused, if Bau- 
delaire's definition be regarded as adequate : Le genie 
rtest que Venfance retrouvee a volonte. The paper on 
Child 's Play, the Child's Garden of Verses, and certain 
passages quoted in the earlier pages of this book dis- 
play a power of returning to the ideas and feelings 
of childhood which has seldom if ever been shown in 
a higher degree, or has existed except along with in- 
tellectual powers of a very considerable calibre. 

It related also to the ordinary sensations of matu- 
rity. We have all been active and all been tired, but 
who has given us such pictures of activity and of 
fatigue as Stevenson? Consider the account of his 
tobogganing, place beside it the calm of weariness 
following exercise described in Walking Tours, or the 
drowsy labour of the end of the Inland Voyage, and 
then recall David Balfour. "By what I have read 
in books, I think few that have held a pen were ever 
really wearied, or they would write of it more strongly. 
I had no care of my life, neither past nor future, and 
I scarce remembered there was such a lad as David 



348 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

Balfour; I did not think of myself, but just of each 
fresh step, which I was sure would be my last, with 
despair, and of Alan, who was the cause of it, with 
hatred." 

As in books so in correspondence. Letters were 
at times to Stevenson an irksome duty, at others a 
welcome opportunity for the outpouring of himself to 
his friends, but in haste or in delight it was entirely 
without calculation that he dictated or wrote. It 
occurred suddenly to him one day that his letters to 
Colvin from Samoa "would make good pickings" 
after his death, "and a man could make some kind of 
a book out of it without much trouble." So little 
have people understood his character and moods, that 
after this point they have even found in the Vailima 
Letters a self-conscious tone and a continual appeal 
to the gallery. 

To see him was utterly to disbelieve in any regard 
of ulterior motives. He was his father's son, and 
with him also, "his affections and emotions, passion- 
ate as these were, and liable to passionate ups and 
downs, found the most eloquent expression both in 
words and gestures. Love, anger, and indignation 
shone through him and broke forth in imagery, like 
what we read of Southern races." If he were talking, 
he was seldom for a moment still, but generally paced 
restlessly up and down the room, using his hands 
continually to emphasise what he was saying, but with 
gestures that seemed purely necessary and natural. 

It is very difficult to give the impression of his de- 
meanour and the brilliancy of his talk without falling 
into the contrary error, and suggesting a self-con- 



R. L. S. 349 

sciousness full of acting and exaggeration. Nothing 
could be further from the truth, and it is easily shown. 
His singleness of mind always, in later days, at any 
rate, impressed friends and foes alike with his sin- 
cerity of purpose. He was no sportsman and no 
athlete — fragile and long-haired — yet nobody ever 
hinted he was unmanly: he was given to preaching, 
and himself not beyond reproach, yet no one for an 
instant suspected him of hypocrisy. Whatever he 
did he did with his whole heart, and it was hard for 
any one to think otherwise. All the foibles of mys- 
teriousness and secrecy which formed a part of his life 
in student days fell away from him before the end. 
The burden of responsibility had diminished, it may 
be, the gaiety of his temper; but his character shone 
out the more clearly, as the years showed the man. 

II. If Stevenson delivered himself over, heart and 
soul, as I have said, to the absorbing interest or the 
ruling passion of the moment, it was assuredly not 
for the want of other interests or other passions. Of 
the many-sidedness of his mind the variety of his 
works is surely sufficient evidence, and even these by 
no means exhausted the whole of his resources. He 
wrote novels — the novel of adventure, the novel of 
character, the novel of incident; he wrote short stories 
and essays of all kinds — their variety it is impossible 
even to characterise; he wrote history and biography, 
fables and moralities, and treatises on ethics; he 
wrote poems — blank verse, lyrics and ballads, songs 
and poetry for children; he wrote plays, ranging from 
melodrama to genteel comedy; books of travel re- 



350 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

flective and descriptive; he composed prayers and 
lay sermons, and even ventured on political specula- 
tion. 

All were not of equal merit — that is not now to the 
point — but it would not be difficult to pick out at 
least ten works differing widely from each other, but 
all definitely belonging to the highest class of their 
kind. Only one verdict is possible, and for that it 
is necessary to lay hands upon a commonplace, and 
appropriate it to the benefit of the man who has best 
right to the distinction. It is curious that the saying 
was first made for Goldsmith, the best loved among 
our authors of the eighteenth century, the one who, 
in Professor Raleigh's phrase, shares with Stevenson 
"the happy privilege of making lovers among his 
readers." But of Stevenson it is even more true to 
say with Dr. Johnson: Nullum fere scribendi genus 
non tetigity nullum quod tetigit non ornaviL 

For this diversity of power and achievement I have 
relied on the evidence of his published writings, 
because it would otherwise appear incredible. But 
account must also be taken of at least a part of his 
unfinished and unpublished work, differing again in 
kind; and to that in turn must be added the indica- 
tions in his letters of other veins of character or re- 
flection that were never worked at all. Over and 
above all there was the talk of the man himself, in 
which the alternations were even more rapid and 
more striking. Wit, humour, and pathos; the roman- 
tic, the tragic, the picturesque; stern judgment, wise 
counsel, wild fooling, all fell into their natural places, 
followed each other in rapid and easy succession, and 



R. L. S. 351 

made a marvellous whole, not the least of the wonder 
being the congruity and spontaneity which gave to it 
the just effect of being a perfectly natural utterance. 

The quality was, of course, not without its defects, 
the chief of which were an apparent detachment and 
a sort of fickleness, or want of persistence. It was 
probably the former of these which led several persons 
quite independently of each other to give Stevenson 
the name of "Sprite," a being exempt from the ordi- 
nary limitations of mankind, an Ariel free to wander 
through the realms of imagination, turning hither and 
thither as his fancies prompted him. 

Of the abandonment of his inventions I have al- 
ready spoken. "He was always full of schemes, and 
plans, and fancies," wrote W. E. Henley. "You left 
him hot on one, and the next time you saw him, you 
found to your distress (having gone all the way with 
him) that he had forgotten all about it." 

Thus if he saw life on each of its many sides in turn 
with an intensity denied to a wider range of vision, 
he was liable at times to see it neither steadily nor 
whole. For the latter he was somewhat compensated 
by the fact that he saw so many aspects of it in rapid 
succession that he speedily corrected any narrowness 
of consideration, his nature further helping him in 
this — that he never saw it with any narrowness of 
temper. 

Taken together with the kindliness of his nature 
it also, to a great extent, explains his extraordinary 
gift of sympathy. He seemed to divine from his own 
experience how other people felt, and how best they 
might be encouraged or consoled. I doubt if any 



352 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

one ever remained for long in his company either 
reticent or ill at ease. A good instance was shown 
in Stevenson's talks at Sydney with a man formerly 
engaged in the "blackbirding" trade, who was with 
great difficulty induced to speak of his experiences. 
"He was very shy at first," said Stevenson, "and it 
was not till I told him of a good many of my esca- 
pades that I could get him to thaw, and then he 
poured it all out. I have always found that the best 
way of getting people to be confidential." We have 
seen with what success he approached the natives in 
this manner; in like fashion, no doubt, he inquired of 
Highlanders about the Appin murder. 

But even where he had some set purpose in view, 
his talk seemed to be a natural and purely sponta- 
neous outpouring of himself. It never seemed to me 
to be vanity — if it were, it was the most genial that 
ever existed — but rather a reference to instances 
within his own knowledge to illustrate the point in 
hand. He never monopolised the conversation, how- 
ever eager he might be, but was faithful to his pref- 
erence for talk which is in its nature a debate; "the 
amicable counter-assertion of personality," and "the 
Protean quality which is in man" enabled him, with- 
out ceasing to be himself, to meet the temper of his 
company. 

With this multiplicity one might expect to find 
room in his character for many contradictory quali- 
ties or the presence in excess and defect of the very 
same virtues, and this in truth was so. To reconcile 
opposites was a task he thought of but little import- 
ance, and a favourite phrase with him was Whitman's: 



R. L. S. 353 

" Do I contradict myself ? Very well, then I contra- 
dict myself." Consistency was a virtue for which it 
was easy to pay too high a price, and often it had to 
be surrendered for matters of greater import. As- 
piration and humour, shrewdness and romance, pro- 
fusion and self-denial, self-revelation and reserve, in 
him were curiously matched. On his frankness and 
his reticence I have already dwelt. He speaks of 
himself, as Professor Raleigh says, " with no shadow 
of hypocrisy and no whiff or taint of indecent famili- 
arity "; he tells you everything, as you think at first, 
and so simply and so frankly that it is only gradually 
you realise that he has not been revealing the things 
nearest his heart, that you learn no secrets of his 
home or his religion, nor of anything that it was not 
for you to know. Self-denial, again, he showed in 
many ways; in his youth, especially, when money 
was scarce with him, if any one had to go without, 
he was the first to surrender his claim and sacrifice 
himself. On the other hand, with "that virtue of 
frugality which is the armour of the artist" he was 
but ill-equipped. 

Of his self-restraint in literature there can be no 
better instance than the very sparing use he makes 
of the pathetic. In the early essay on Nurses it is 
perhaps a trifle forced; there are hardly two more 
beautiful or dignified examples of it in English litera- 
ture than in the essay on Old Mortality, and the death 
of the fugitive French colonel in St. Ives. But it was 
only in conversation that one realised the extraor- 
dinary degree to which he possessed the power of 
moving the heart-strings. It was not that he made 



354 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

frequent or unmanly use of it, but being less upon 
his guard, the pathetic aspect of some person or inci- 
dent would appeal to him, and in a moment he would 
have the least tender-hearted of his hearers hardly 
less deeply moved than himself. Ordinarily even in 
conversation he used it chiefly as a weapon of chiv- 
alry in defence of the neglected and the old; but as 
Swift "could write beautifully about a broomstick," 
so Stevenson one day described a chair, enlarging 
upon the hard lot of the legs that had to support the 
idle seat, until the boy to whom he was talking was 
almost in tears. On the other side must be set his 
description of "Home, Sweet Home" in Across the 
Plains y as "belonging to that class of art which may 
be best described as a brutal assault upon the feel- 
ings. Pathos must be redeemed by dignity of treat- 
ment. If you wallow naked in the pathetic, like the 
author of 'Home, Sweet Home,' you make your 
hearers weep in an unmanly fashion." 

But the supreme instance of diverse elements in 
him was patience and its opposite. Never have I 
heard of any one in whom these contradictories were 
both shown in so high a degree. His endurance in 
illness and in work we have seen: no pain was too 
great to bear, no malady too long: he never mur- 
mured until it was over. No task was too irksome, 
no revision too exacting — laboriously, and like an 
eager apprentice he went through with it to the end. 

But on the other hand, when impatience came to 
the surface, it blazed up like the anger of a man who 
had never known a check. It was generally caused 
by some breach of faith or act of dishonesty or un- 



R. L. S. 355 

justifiable delay. The only time I know of its being 
displayed in public was in a Paris restaurant, where 
Stevenson had ordered a change of wine, and the 
very bottle he had rejected was brought back to him 
with a different label. There was a sudden explo- 
sion of wrath; the bottle was hurled against the wall; 
in an instant the restaurant was emptied, and — so 
much for long-suffering — the proprietor and his staff 
were devoting the whole of their attention and art to 
appease and reconcile the angry man. 

Sternness and tenderness in him were very equally 
matched, though the former was kept mainly for 
himself and those nearest to him, of whom he asked 
nearly as much as of himself: tenderness, on the other 
hand, was for the failings of others. For like many 
chivalrous people, he expected but little of what he 
gave with so much freedom. His tenderness had 
something feminine, yet without lacking the peculiar 
strength that distinguishes it in a man. The Roman 
quality of sternness he so much admired came to 
himself, no doubt, with his Scottish blood. It is a 
virtue that for the most part requires exclusive do- 
minion over a character for its proper display, and in 
Stevenson it had many rivals. But that it was genu- 
ine his appreciation of Lord Braxfield and his render- 
ing of it in Lord Hermiston place beyond all doubt. 

Sternness and pity it is quite possible to harmonise, 
and the secret in Stevenson's case is perhaps solved 
in the following letter: "I wish you to read Taine's 
Origines de la France Contemporaine . . . and to try 
and understand what I have in my mind (ay, and in 
my heart!) when I preach law and police to you in 



356 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

season and out of season. What else do we care for, 
what else is anything but secondary, in that embroiled 
confounded ravelment of politics, but to protect the 
old, and the weak, and the quiet, from that bloody 
wild beast that slumbers in man? 

" True to my character, I have to preach. But just 
read the book. It is not absolutely fair, for Taine 
does not feel, with a warm heart, the touching side of 
their poor souls' illusions; he does not feel the in- 
finite pathos of the Federations, poor pantomime and 
orgie, that (to its actors) seemed upon the very mar- 
gin of heaven; nor the unspeakable, almost unthink- 
able tragedy, of such a poor, virtuous wooden-headed 
lot as the methodistic Jacobins. But he tells, as no 
one else, the dreadful end of sentimental politics." 

III. To deal with Stevenson's intellectual qualities 
alone is to approach his less fascinating side, and to 
miss far more than half the influence of his charm. 
I have referred to his chivalry, only to find that in 
reality I was thinking of every one of the whole group 
of attributes which are associated with that name. 
Loyalty, honesty, generosity, courage; courtesy, ten- 
derness, and self-devotion; to impute no unworthy 
motives and to keep no grudge; to bear misfortune 
with cheerfulness and without a murmur; to strike 
hard for the right and take no mean advantage; to 
be gentle to women and kind to all that are weak; 
to be very rigorous with oneself and very lenient to 
others — these, and any other virtues ever implied in 
"chivalry," were the traits that distinguished Ste- 
venson. They do not make life easy, as he frequently 



R. L. S. 357 

found. One day, his stepson tells me, they were sit- 
ting on the deck of a schooner in the Pacific, and 
Stevenson was reading a copy of Don Quixote. Sud- 
denly he looked up, and, with an air of realisation, 
said sadly, as if to himself, "That's me." 

In spite of his knowledge of the world and his 
humour, and a vein of cynicism most difficult to de- 
fine, many were his quixotries and many the wind- 
mills at which he tilted, less often wholly in vain than 
we thought who watched his errantry. The example 
remains; and 

" Would to-day, when Courtesy grows chill, 
And life's fine loyalties are turned to jest, 
Some fire of thine might burn within us still! 
Ah, would but one might lay his lance in rest, 
And charge in earnest — were it but a mill!" 

Of some of the virtues I have cited it would be 
superfluous to say more. There is no need to repeat 
how he faced death in the Riviera or bore the weari- 
ness of exile. But I may be pardoned if I dwell upon 
a few of the more striking instances in which he dis- 
played his open-mindedness, his generosity of temper, 
his hatred of cruelty, and his readiness to forgive 
offences. 

Generosity is a word in sore danger of being limited 
to the giving of money, but to Stevenson the quality 
must be attributed not only in this, but also in the 
widest possible application. It is a virtue that from 
its nature is easily abused; this did but make Steven- 
son think the more highly of it, and it can have 
no more splendid motto than his own aphorism, of 
which one version runs: "The mean man doubted, 



358 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

Greatheart was deceived. 'Very well/ said Great- 
heart." 

Of Stevenson's own generous temper there is no 
better illustration than a letter written in early days 
when he had been called to task by Henley for some 
words of depreciation. 

"I think the crier-up has a good trade; but I like 
less and less every year the berth of runner-down; 

and I hate to see my friends in it. What is 's 

fault? That he runs down. What is the easiest 
thing to do ? To run down. What is it that a strong 
man should scorn to do? To run down. And all 
this comes steeply home to me; for I am horrified to 
gather that I begin myself to fall into this same busi- 
ness which I abhor in others." 

No one ever more eagerly welcomed the success of 
younger writers, entirely unknown to himself; no 
one was ever more ready to hail any new achieve- 
ment in his own art; but of these points the pub- 
lished letters are quite sufficient proof. 

Any offence against himself he forgave readily, nor 
did he find it difficult to make excuses for almost 
any degree of misconduct on the part of others. 

He could be angry enough and stern enough upon 
occasion, but never was there any one so ready to melt 
at the least appeal to his compassion or mercy. In 
his political quarrels he found the greatest difficulty 
in keeping up an open breach with persons whom he 
liked in themselves, and for whom his sympathy was 
engaged, although he was convinced that they were 
ruining Samoa. Truly he might say: "There was 
no man born with so little animosity as I." 



R. L. S. 359 

But in fact the two kinds of generosity went fre- 
quently together. It is impossible for me to give the 
instances I know, but it is the fact that over and over 
again, no sooner had any one quarrelled with him, 
than Stevenson at once began to cast about for some 
means of doing his adversary a service, if only it 
could be done without divulging the source from 
whence it came. 

In the narrower sense he was generous to a fault, 
but was ready to take any amount of personal trouble, 
and exercised judgment in his giving. When there 
was occasion he set no limit to his assistance. " Pray 

remember that if ever X should be in want of 

help, you are to strain my credit to breaking, and to 
mortgage all I possess or can expect, to help him." 
But in another case: "I hereby authorise you to pay 

when necessary £ to Z ; if I gave him more, 

it would only lead to his starting a gig and a Pome- 
ranian dog. I hope you won't think me hard about 
this. If you think the sum insufficient, you can com- 
municate with me by return on the subject." 

But Stevenson's best service was often in the words 
with which he accompanied his gift. To his funeral 
only close personal friends were invited, but there 
appeared a tall gaunt stranger, whom nobody remem- 
bered to have seen before. He came up and apolo- 
gised for his presence, and said he could not keep 
away, for Stevenson had saved him one day when he 
was at his lowest ebb. "I was wandering despond- 
ently along the road, and I met Mr. Stevenson, and I 
don't know whether it was my story, or that he saw I 
was a Scotchman, but he gave me twenty dollars and 



360 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

some good advice and encouragement. I took heart 
again, and Fm getting on all right now, but if I hadn't 
met Mr. Stevenson, and he hadn't helped me, I 
should have killed myself that day." And the tears 
ran down his face. 

Of Stevenson's open mind there could perhaps be 
no better proof than the passage in his last letter to 
R. A. M. Stevenson, written only two months before 
his death. If there was a class of men on this earth 
whom Louis loathed and placed beyond the pale of 
humanity, it was the dynamiters and anarchists; yet 
he could write of them in the following strain: — 
"There is a new something or other in the wind 
which exercises me hugely: anarchy — I mean anar- 
chism. People who (for pity's sake) commit dastardly 
murders very basely, die like saints, and leave beauti- 
ful letters behind 'em (did you see Vaillant to his 
daughter? it was the New Testament over again); 
people whose conduct is inexplicable to me, and yet 
their spiritual life higher than that of most. This is 
just what the early Christians must have seemed to 
the Romans. ... If they go on being martyred a 
few years more, the gross, dull, not unkindly bour- 
geois may get tired or ashamed or afraid of going on 
martyring; and the anarchists come out at the top 
just like the early Christians." 

I have never met any one who hated cruelty of any 
kind with so lively a horror — I had almost said with 
so fanatical a detestation — from his earliest years. 

" Do you remember telling me one day when I came 
in," wrote the Rev. Peter Rutherford, his tutor, to 
Mrs. Thomas Stevenson after her son's death, " how 



R. L. S. 361 

it was his eyes were so swollen : tear-swollen ? You 
had found him in the study sobbing bitterly over a 
tale of cruelty he had been reading all alone." At the 
other end of his life I can remember his own impas- 
sioned account, given late one Sunday evening on his 
return from Apia, of how he had found a crowd of 
natives watching a dog-fight. He had plunged into 
their midst and stopped it, and turned to rebuke 
them. " But I found all my Samoan had clean gone 
out of my head, and all I could say to them was 
'Pala'ai, Pala'ai!' (Cowards, Cowards!)." But the 
most characteristic of all his utterances was at Pit- 
lochry in 1 88 1, when he saw a dog being ill-treated. 
He at once interposed, and when the owner resented 
his interference and told him: "It's not your dog," 
he cried out: "It's God's dog, and I'm here to pro- 
tect it." 

Irksome as ill-health was to Stevenson, it was yet 
the possible effect on his own character that he most 
dreaded, for he suspected that "being an invalid was 
a fatal objection to a human being," and his horror 
of valetudinarianism was due to its being " the worst 
training upon earth." 

He felt it hard that he should be judged by the 
same standard as men to whom the world was still 
" full of sea-bathing, and horse exercise, and bracing, 
manly virtues." Moreover, although he always reck- 
oned his life "as a thing to be dashingly used and 
cheerfully hazarded," he could not be altogether un- 
conscious of the insecurity of his tenure. On one of 
those fragments of paper preserved by chance, on 
which he used to write down his remarks during the 



362 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

many periods when he was forbidden to speak, these 
words occur: "You know the remarks of no doctor 
mean anything in my case. My case is a sport. I 
may die to-night or live till sixty." I can remember 
his saying to me in Samoa, "I haven't had a fair 
chance, I've had to spend nearly all my life in ex- 
pectation of death." The chief result with him per- 
haps was that he sat looser to life, and had grown 
altogether familiar with the idea of leaving it. 

The question of Stevenson's ill-health brings one to 
the consideration which troubled him now and again 
in his later days : whether he had not made a mistake 
in adopting literature as his profession, or whether, 
after all, he might not have led a life of action. 
With him, as with Scott, "to have done things wor- 
thy to be written was a dignity to which no man 
made any approach who had only written things 
worthy to be read." At times he thought with a pass- 
ing regret of the life of action he had forsaken, and 
was struck by the irony that his father, who had op- 
posed his choice of the profession of literature, had 
come to approve of it before he died, while he whom 
nothing but that change of life would satisfy, had 
himself lived to doubt its wisdom. But in these com- 
parisons it was an ideal life that he contemplated, 
where he should be always well and always strong, 
doing his work in the open air. With such health and 
such conditions, his character and his powers might 
have attained to other heights; we should then have 
known a different man, less human and less endeared 
to us by the frailties of our common nature. But the 
field on which he fought with sickness and depression 



R. L. S. 363 

was one in which most of us are at times engaged, and 
where many sufferers carry on a lifelong struggle. 

There was this about him, that he was the only man 
I have ever known who possessed charm in a high 
degree, whose character did not suffer from the pos- 
session. The gift comes naturally to women, and they 
are at their best in its exercise. But a man requires 
to be of a very sound fibre before he can be entirely 
himself and keep his heart single, if he carries about 
with him a talisman to obtain from all men and all 
women the object of his heart's desire. Both gifts 
Stevenson possessed, not only the magic but also the 
strength of character to which it was safely intrusted. 

But who shall bring back that charm ? Who shall 
unfold its secret? He was all that I have said: he 
was inexhaustible, he was brilliant, he was romantic, 
he was fiery, he was tender, he was brave, he was 
kind. With all this there went something more. He 
always liked the people he was with, and found the 
best and brightest that was in them; he entered into 
all the thoughts and moods of his companions, and 
led them along pleasant ways, or raised them to a 
courage and a gaiety like his own. If criticism or 
reminiscence has yielded any further elucidation of 
his spell, I do not know: it defies my analysis, nor 
have I ever heard it explained. 

There linger on the lips of men a few names that 
bring to us, as it were, a breeze blowing off the shores 
of youth. Most of those who have borne them were 
taken from the world before early promise could be 
fulfilled, and so they rank in our regard by virtue 
of their possibilities alone. Stevenson is among the 



364 LIFE OF STEVENSON 

fewer still who bear the award both of promise and of 
achievement, and is happier yet in this; besides ad- 
miration and hope, he has raised within the hearts of 
his readers a personal feeling towards himself which 
is nothing less deep than love. 



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